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THE COSSACKS 
THEIR HISTORY AND COUNTRY 



THE COSSACKS 

THEIR HISTORY AND COUNTRY 



BY 

W. P. CRESSON 

LATE CAPTAIN A. E. P./ FORMERLY SECRETARY OP 

THE AMERICAN EMBASSY AT PETROGRAD 

AUTHOR OP "PERSIA" 




NEW YORK 

BRENTANO'S 

1919 



UK3S 

,C7 



COPYRIGHTED, 1919, BY 

BRENTANO'S 



All rights reserved 



THK'PLIMPTON -PRESS 
M OK WOOD 'MASS'U'S'A 



JAN -2 1920 
©CU559260 



TO MY BROTHER 

EMLEN VAUX CRESSON 

A REMINDER OP OUR JOURNEY ALONG THE TEHERAN-BAGDAD 
CARAVAN TRAIL, 1900. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Origin of the "Free People" 1 

II. The Zaporogian Cossacks 21 

III. Yermak and the Cossack Conquest of 

Siberia 44 

IV. Bogdan Hmelnicky: A Cossack National 

Hero 65 

V. The Struggle for the Ukraine 93 

VI. Mazeppa 104 

VII. The End of the Free Ukraine: Little 

Russia 129 

viii. pougatchev 145 

IX. The Hetman Platov 170 

X. The Cossacks of To-day: Organization 

and Government 196 

XI. The Cossacks of To-day : The Don 209 

XII. The Frontiers of Europe. 222 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Zaporogian Cossacks Frontispiece 

The old defenders of the Polish and Russian fron- 
tiers against the Tartars writing a letter of defiance 
to the Sultan. 

FACING PAGE 

A Zaporogian Cossack 22 

Yermak's March in Siberia 44 

Statue of Bogdan 66 

The Hetman Platov 170 

Sketch Map of the 'principal Cossack Territories 
of the Present Day : 196 

Kouban Cossacks 220 

And "Cossacks" of the "Wild Division." 



FOREWORD 

TO weave a connected narrative from the known 
episodes of Cossack history would be a diffi- 
cult and, in many ways, an impossible task. Such 
a work would, moreover, involve years of patient 
preparation and research — for authentic records 
concerning the subject are only to be found scat- 
tered as isolated chapters or paragraphs among the 
pages of Russian, Polish and Turkish history. 

Poets and native bards were, generally speaking, 
the chief historians of the Cossacks or "Free 
People." The guiding traditions of their race, like 
those of all pastoral peoples, are to be found in 
songs, ballads and f olkstories, rather than in written 
records. Yet the national ideals thus orally main- 
tained have lost nothing thereby in strength or 
influence. The Cossack ballads and khorovod of 
the present day, like those of earlier times, teach 
love of freedom, loyalty to comrades and hetman, 
and a sturdy devotion to the privileges which the 
courage of their forefathers obtained for them in 
the past. Cossack folktales differ in many respects 
from the heroic legends and peasant by-lines of the 
North. They possess, moreover, a characteristic 



vi FOREWORD 

strain — praise of joyous adventure and "glad 
living" — all their own. Filled with the spirit of 
the "Free Steppes," they tell of hard knocks given 
and taken for the sheer love of fight; of struggles 
desperate and bloody, followed by Gargantuan 
feasting and debauch. Doughty feats with the 
wine-cup are honoured almost equally with deeds of 
war. In all these romances the dominant note is 
the praise of personal liberty and of a freedom often 
degenerating into license. 

While the Cossack did, or ballad-mongers, 
frankly celebrate the deeds of their heroes in a 
measure of exaggeration permitted by patriotism 
and poetic license, the more ambitious and labored 
"historical" works of certain Polish and Russian 
writers only furnish an account so manifestly par- 
tial and prejudiced that they have little more schol- 
arly authority than the Cossack folklore tales. A 
great historical romance has added to this con- 
fusion. All that is generally known abroad con- 
cerning the most glorious epoch of Cossack history 
is contained in the heroic pages of the late Henryk 
Sienkiewicz. In these masterpieces of fiction the 
part played by the tyrannical oppressors of the 
Cossack patriot Bogdan is lauded to the skies, and 
every act of his "base-born" followers too often 
treated with a fine if unconvincingly nobiliary con- 
tempt. 

To French historical authorities, Salvandy, Ram- 
baud and notably Lesur (to whose Histoire des 



FOREWORD yii 

Kosaques y published in 1814, the author acknowl- 
edges himself especially indebted) we owe a more 
objective treatment of the Cossack's story. Fol- 
lowing their lead the writer will attempt in his 
work to dispel something of the ignorance so 
strangely persistent outside of Russia with respect 
to the origin and significance of this military caste 
or people. The term "Cossack," while generally 
applied to a characteristic branch of the old Russian 
cavalry service — more properly designates a com- 
munity of warlike clans loosely bound together by 
the common tradition of a long and stirring history. 
If during the closing decades of the imperial system 
the Cossack "nations" became more or less identi- 
fied with the other peoples of the Russian empire, 
they were nevertheless permitted through the 
strength of their free traditions and the importance 
of their services to the state, to retain the marks of 
an outstanding individuality — a policy wholly in 
opposition to the great unifying aim of Russian 
imperialism. 

It is the proudest boast of the Cossacks of to- 
day — as of their forbears of the Ukraine — that 
they have never been classed as serfs nor for a mo- 
ment lost their freeman's instinct for the principles 
of liberty. While the peasants of North Russia 
were bowed in shameful submission to the Great 
Princes of Moscow and later to the "dark forces" 
of the Tsar's court and the Baltic-German official- 
dom of the capital on the Neva, the history of the 



viii FOREWORD 

Cossack inhabitants of the southern steppes was (as 
we shall later see) a long epic of heroic resistance to 
the encroachments of autocracy. If their distrust 
of the infinite docility of the moujik class has often 
made them in the past the blind instruments of 
reaction, their loyalty to Tsardom has never im- 
plied any abdication of the privileges guaranteed 
their own caste. 

While the organization of the present Cossack 
armies is the outcome of a system which may gen- 
erally be termed "Democratic-Feudalism" — i. e., a 
popular system of land tenure in return for military 
service to the old regime — their basic traditions 
were essentially free and republican. In spite of 
their old-time loyalty to the Tsar, the Cossack 
troops of the army — and notably those about the 
imperial court — were among the first to raise the 
standard of revolt during the constructive changes 
of March, 1917. The return of the Cossacks to the 
side of popular government was but the logical out- 
come of the whole trend of their history. 

In order to understand the significance of the 
present Cossack movement in Southern Russia and 
the difference separating the former "Free People" 
of the Russian Empire from the moujiki or peas- 
antry of the north, some knowledge of their history 
and origin is essential. 

The following pages only attempt to sketch 
the outlines of their subject, yet so far as the author 
is aware no more comprehensive study of Cossack 



FOREWORD 



IX 



life and history has appeared in English. The 
chapter which traces the early history and develop- 
ment of the Cossack race is little more than a syn- 
opsis of facts forming part of a much broader 
subject: the history of the growth and expansion 
of Modern Russia. Elsewhere in this narrative, 
an effort has been made to follow, whenever pos- 
sible, the colourful style of the original Cossack 
legends and sources. These latter are almost always 
biographical and fragmentary yet they give a vivid 
picture of their time and subject. The story of 
Yermak's heroic march through the twilight of the 
northern forests and his discovery and conquest of 
Siberia ; of Bogdan's fight for the Cossack liberties 
against the proud nobles of Poland ; of Mazeppa's 
almost forgotten part in the epic struggle between 
Charles XII of Sweden and Peter the Great for the 
Empire of the North; of the strange outbreak of 
savagery led by the "False Tsar" Pougatchev — 
the eighteenth century forerunner of the mob- 
leaders of our own day — are matters of interest to 
the general reader. 

Recent events show the importance of a better 
understanding of the facts of Cossack history. 

One qualification at least the author may claim 
for the task he has undertaken. Many miles of 
travel in Cossack country during tw r o fateful years 
— just before and after the Russian Revolution — 
brought him into familiar and friendly contact with 
the Cossacks of the present day. Out of a desire to 



x FOREWORD 

acquaint himself more thoroughly with their story 
and the part they have played in Russia's develop- 
ment grew the notes and studies from which the 
present volume has been written. 

W. P. C. 

Princeton University, 

September, 1919. 



THE COSSACKS 

THEIR HISTORY AND COUNTRY 

CHAPTER I 

THE ORIGIN OF THE "FREE PEOPLE" 

THE level plains and steppes of South Russia 
were known to the ancients as the broad 
channel followed by the ebb and flow of every 
fresh wave of conquest or migration passing be- 
tween Europe and Asia. The legions of Rome and 
Byzance found this territory as impossible to oc- 
cupy by military force as the high seas. The little 
known history of "Scythia" — from the earliest 
times until the thirteenth century of the Christian 
era — presents a confused picture of barbarous 
tribes pressing one upon another, the stronger 
driving the weaker before them from the more fa- 
voured hunting grounds. Often, voluntarily or by 
force, the victors included the vanquished in their 
own "superior" civilization. There are many 
reasons why it is difficult or impossible to follow 
with any degree of certainty the national history 
of these races. "Their long-forgotten quarrels, 
their interminglings and separations, above all the 
constant changes in their names and habitat make 



2 THE COSSACKS 

the study of their history as difficult as it is un- 
profitable." (Lesur, Histoire de$ Kosaques.) 

This ignorance of the changes — political and 
economical — which are constantly taking place 
along the amorphous racial frontiers of Eastern 
Europe, has continued to our own times. But at 
recurrent intervals these Slav borderlands sepa- 
rating the Occident from the Orient become the 
scene of political upheavals so vast in their con- 
sequences that the very foundations of European 
civilization are shaken in their turn. 

The great Tartar invasion which, during the thir- 
teenth century, swept out of Asia and spread across 
the steppes of Southern Russia, was an occurrence 
of such magnitude that its echoes travelled to the 
most distant states of Europe. The arrival of fugi- 
tive bands of Khomans, Black Bulgars, and other 
wild steppe tribesmen at the court of Bela IV, 
King of Hungary, first spread the fame and terror 
of these new invaders. From these refugees and 
their descriptions of the enemy the sovereigns of 
Christendom learned with horror of the fate which 
in the short space of a few months had overtaken 
the most powerful strongholds of the princes of 
Bus and Muscovy. Even the Poles — whose more 
civilized and warlike state was generally considered 
the bulwark separating the "barbarians" of ancient 
Scythia from the communities of Europe — had 
been forced to make the best terms possible: by 
paying a degrading tribute to the invaders. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE "FREE PEOPLE" 3 

The powers of Europe now beheld upon the 
frontiers of their own empires an enemy far more 
redoubtable than the Saracen "infidels" against 
whom they had waged their mystical crusades. 
Turning from his dream of rescuing the Holy 
Sepulchre the Emperor Frederick II exercised all 
his eloquence to unite the Christian princes in a 
league against the Mongols. The Roman Pontiff, 
fearing for the Christian religion, preached a Holy 
War. Saint Louis prepared to march in person 
against the barbarians. 

"All of civilized Europe was given over to anx- 
iety and apprehension. The Tartars were repre- 
sented as monsters living upon human flesh."* 
"Even the most reasonable believed that the end 
of the world was at hand. The people of Gog and 
Magog advancing under the command of the Anti- 
christ were about to bring about the destruction 
of the universe." Suddenly, as though by common 
agreement or following some general command, the 
widely scattered hordes of horsemen turned once 
more towards the East, finally settling in great 
armed camps upon the fertile steppes near the 
shores of the Volga. In this inexplicable action, 
as mysterious as their first appearance from the 
heart of Asia, the writers of the time perceived the 
hand of an unseen Providence. The avenging 
wrath of the Deity had been turned aside by the 
intercession of the priests and holy men of 
Christendom. 

* Memoires de Joinville. 



4 THE COSSACKS 

Yet complete as the conquest of the Tartars ap- 
peared to be it was not destined to outlast the cen- 
tury which saw its rise. As usual in Oriental des- 
potisms the seeds of its dissolution came from 
within. 

The first result of these disaffections — notably 
a revolt of the Nogai tribesmen against the princes 
of the Golden Horde — was the disappearance of 
the crude administrative system exercised by the 
Tartar rulers over the old tribes of the steppes. 
These began once more to reassert their inde- 
pendence. Bands of Scythian refugees, Khosars, 
Khomans and "Khosaks," began to leave the 
marshy deltas of the great rivers such as the Don 
and Dnieper — where they had found in common 
a precarious refuge — and mounted on horses 
stolen from the Tartars returned to their familiar 
haunts. Here a terrible desolation spoke every- 
where of "Tartar Peace." How complete had been 
the destruction of whole tribes and settlements of 
the previous inhabitants — caught by the over-^ 
whelming avalanche of Tartar horsemen — is pic- 
tured by the monkish chroniclers of a previous gen- 
eration. In Hakluyt's Voyages these travellers 
describe how "for over three hundred leagues" they 
passed through great fields of whitening bones, 
"the only signs that might recall the presence of 
previous inhabitants of the steppes." 

The wars of the princes of Tartary with the re- 
volted Nogai and the struggles of the latter with 



THE ORIGIN OF THE "FREE PEOPLE" 5 

the Russians now gave to the miserable remnants 
of the ancient lords of Scythia an opportunity to 
recover something of their ascendency, over 
the wildest and most deserted parts of the steppes. 
As these scattered tribesmen became more skilled 
in desert warfare, both Russians and Tartars oc- 
casionally sought their alliance and the aid of their 
ill-armed cavalry in settling their quarrels. But 
whether gathered in armed camps or Slovods, or 
else leading an errant nomad life, these "war 
bands," composed of refugees and renegades of 
every origin, were a constant menace to the 
frontiers of their more civilized neighbours; pirat- 
ing on the great rivers and attacking the caravans of 
Russian or Tartar merchants with indifferent zeal. 
In the precarious existence of these rovers, we find 
the first traces of the frontier "civilization" of the 
Cossacks. 

No problem of Russian history has given rise to 
more controversy than that of the origin of the 
Cossack race. It now appears established that the 
influence of the geographic and climatic conditions 
which exist on the steppes, modifying to a common 
type the characteristics of the peoples and 
tribes (often of wholly different origin) who 
in turn have inhabited the ancient lands of the 
Scyths — is the paramount factor in solving this 
problem. The tracing of blood ties and relation- 
ships would therefore seem of less importance than 
an understanding of the conditions under which the 



6 THE COSSACKS 

characteristic Cossack civilization has been devel- 
oped. 

The Russian word Kasak — of which "Cossack" 
is the English equivalent — still signifies in several 
Tartar dialects a "Horseman" or "Rover." By a 
not unnatural association of ideas this term has 
been adopted at different times and in widely sep- 
arated localities as a tribal name by nomad peoples 
of the steppes. But the attempt not infrequently 
made to trace a direct connection between these 
tribes and the famous Kasaki of modern Russia is 
generally based upon far-fetched historical anal- 
ogies.* 

In Clarke's famous "Travels in the Ukraine" the 
ingenious theory is advanced that the country of 
"Kasachia" mentioned by Constantine Porphyro- 
genetes was the original homeland of the modern 
"tribes" of Russia which have taken the general 
name of Kasak or Cossack. But the relative un- 
importance of this people lost among powerful 
L 

* A modern example exists of the facility with which 
errors may be made in tracing tribal relationships through 
nomenclature alone. Not far from Tiflis, near the fron- 
tiers of old Armenia, the author recently visited the ter- 
ritory occupied by a tribe of Tartar origin still called 
"Kasaks." The skill of these nomads as rug-weavers has 
filled the bazaars with a coarse but well-woven carpet bear- 
ing their tribal name. It is certain, however, that neither 
ethnographically nor historically does any connection ex- 
ist between these nomad tribesmen and the Cossacks of 
modern Russia. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE "FREE PEOPLE" 7 

neighbours whose history has survived to the 
present day is the strongest argument against such 
a supposition. Moreover, as we have already 
pointed out, other tribes of this name have more 
than once risen to temporary importance in the 
annals of the steppes. 

It was not until the latter half of the fifteenth 
century that the ebbing tide of Tartar invasion, 
which for nearly two centuries had submerged the 
richest lands of the great Russian plain, once more 
opened to settlement from the North the rich 
steppes of the "Black Earth" district, and the 
scarcely less fertile lands to the South and East. 
During this long period of subjection the Russian 
nation had been held back from its richest heritage. 

Scattered among the Finnish aborigines of the 
great northern forests — in that fabulous land of 
"Cimmerian darkness" where, as Herodotus states, 
the inhabitants "spend half their time in slumber" — 
the men of "Rus" had kept alive the faith of their 
ancestors while learning their long lesson of pa- 
tience and endurance. Thus it came about that so 
many of the old centres and cities of Holy Russia 
are found today in the most barren and unattrac- 
tive parts of the great Russian plain. 

When the prairies of the Ukraine — the "border 
land" — had ceased to be the hunting grounds of 
roving nomads, and the Asiatic hordes had with- 
drawn with their flocks and herds to the oases of 
their native deserts, the peasant population of 



8 THE COSSACKS 

Northern Russia became filled with a restless fever 
for emigration. Out of the dark fir wilderness 
came bands of pioneers, — dazzled by the bright 
sunlight of the steppes, — pressing ever south- 
ward. Thus settlers of true Russian blood began 
once more to populate the war-worn plains of 
Scythia where free land and, dearer still, personal 
freedom rewarded the daring of the adventurer. 

While fear and hunger had kept them submis- 
sively huddled about the wooden fortresses of the 
hoyars, no laws had been necessary to chain the 
peasants to the glebe. Serfdom now began in Rus- 
sia at the time when the feudal system of Europe 
was sinking into decay. For when the princes and 
nobles of these northern principalities found their 
apanages and broad grants of forest land fast re- 
verting to wilderness through the flight of the agri- 
cultural laborers, legal steps were taken to pre- 
serve their "rights." In edicts of Ivan the Terrible 
and Boris Godounov, we find the legislative traces 
of this great southern movement. Yet, in spite of 
terrible punishments and laws enacted to keep the 
peasants from roving, the moujiki continued to 
join themselves to the remnants of the wild Asiatic 
tribes and the no less barbarous "Cossacks" of their 
own race, who had established themselves in vaga- 
bond communities following close upon the receding 
frontier of Tartar invasion. 

It would appear that about this time the term 
Cossack or Kasak was first used to describe a 



THE ORIGIN OF THE "FREE PEOPLE" 9 

"masterless man," one who refused to identify him- 
self with the Krestianin or ordinary agricultural 
laborer (a class about to fall wholly into the con- 
dition of serfdom) . The same word may previously 
have been used by the Tartars after their conquest 
of Russia to denote tribesmen who, refusing to 
settle in towns or colonies, preferred to continue the 
nomad and adventurous life of their ancestors. The 
name also began to be applied to soldier-merce- 
naries from the steppe "war bands," who, while 
maintaining the warlike traditions of this wander- 
ing life, refused to become incorporated among the 
men-at-arms attached to the great boyars or to take 
permanent service in the paid militia formed by the 
Tsars after the reign of Ivan IV, 

To the brutal methods of Tartar dominion 
may be ascribed traits which have left a deep 
mark on the government and policy of the empire 
of the Tsars. Russian historians are now the first 
to recognize the depth and force of this influence. 
Naturally democratic in their ideals and personal 
relations, long subjection to the Tartars taught the 
Slav people subservience, and (together with later 
principles borrowed by Peter the Great from the 
Prussian system) furnished their rulers a model of 
greedy despotism and autocratic power. Even the 
excesses of revolution in our own day show the per- 
sistence in the Russian state of these pernicious 
alien influences. 

Under the ruthless sword-strokes of Czar Vasili, 



10 THE COSSACKS 

and his successor Ivan the Terrible, began the up- 
building of the great modern state of Russia — 
engulfing in an ever-widening circle of dominion 
the liberties of lesser princelings and the bour- 
geoisie of the forest "City Republics." Such was 
the fate of Pskov, of the Free Republic of Vologda 
and the city of "Lord Novgorod the Great." 

Meanwhile, on the vast southern plains, under 
the leadership of dispossessed boyars, renegade 
Polish nobles, Turkish janissaries, or even some 
far-wandering French or German adventurer, the 
characteristic civilization of the Ukraine Cossack 
communities steadily grew and strengthened. Re- 
cruited from sturdy vagabonds of every race and 
clan, "stolen youths, thieves and patriots" armed 
with the weapons they had brought with them from 
Russia or with the bows and arrows of their Tartar 
neighbours, they fought for and gradually obtained 
the right to exist and to remain free. 

In view of the importance of geographical con- 
ditions upon the inhabitants of these plains, it now 
becomes necessary to consider at greater length 
some of the phenomena peculiar to the South Rus- 
sian Steppes. For thousands of years — until the 
coming of the railways in recent times — the prob- 
lems of life on the Russian prairies must have pre- 
sented themselves again and again under the same 
inevitable forms. The nations who established their 
permanent home in this fertile "smiling wilder- 
ness" were all endowed with similar characteristics. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE "FREE PEOPLE" 11 

Their lives were passed on horseback and their ex- 
istence depended on their skill as breeders of half- 
wild cattle and hunters of wary game. The Greek 
legend of the Centaurs was, in their case, scarcely 
an exaggeration. In plains so vast as to be almost 
without natural limits or defensible frontiers a 
necessary factor of effective occupation became the 
ability to defend a chosen area at any moment in 
hand to hand encounters with a mobile foe. High- 
ways of trade and communication could be 
shifted — in the absence of all natural obstacles — 
with the same ease that a new course can be steered 
at sea. For this reason, the objects of steppe war- 
fare were different from those of ordinary strategy. 
In reading of the military campaigns of the 
Ukraine we must often be prepared to draw our 
comparisons from naval rather than from land op- 
erations. 

The country known as the Ukraine, where the 
characteristic Cossack civilization arose and de- 
veloped, is, as the name indicates, a continental 
"border land," neither European nor Asiatic. On 
the wide steppes of the Black Sea basin even the 
climatic influences of north and south meet with- 
out blending. Thus, while during the short summer 
months a true southern climate prevails, yet the 
return of winter is marked by a cold nearly sub- 
arctic in its intensity. 

In the famous Black Earth region about Kiev 
and Poltava, the brief harvest season forms the 



12 THE COSSACKS 

climax of a miracle of growth. Under the rays of 
an almost tropical sun the wide fields of grain 
change from silvery green to tawny gold in the 
space of days rather than weeks. But with the ad- 
vent of another season the arctic winds sweep 
straight from the Polar seas, unchecked by hill or 
mountain range, all conquering, across the whole 
level expanse of New Russia. Upon the sunny 
steppes tightens once more the icy grip of the 
Empire of the North. There can be no softening 
of the fibre, no slackening of the powers of sturdy 
resistance which above all else characterize the 
Russian race in the population of such a land. 
Both in physique and temperament the lithe dark 
inhabitant of the Ukraine presents the type of a 
southerner. While sprung from the same stock he 
is as distinct from the blond dweller of the north 
as the Provencal of France is different from the 
blue-eyed Norman. To his Slav nature the brief 
vision of southern summer has added a touch of 
imagination, a capacity for boisterous enjoyment, 
lacking, at any rate less apparent, in the Russian 
of "Muscovy." 

Before the coming of the farmer and his plough 
the plains of the Ukraine were everywhere covered 
by high waving grasses, similar to the vanished 
prairies of far western America, or the vegas of 
southern Andalusia. Often this growth is so thick 
that a horseman can only with difficulty force his 
way, and the half -wild cattle almost disappear in 



THE ORIGIN OF THE "FREE PEOPLE" 13 

the richness of their pasture. Not even a tree or 
bush breaks the straight sky line of the horizon. 
Meandering in wide curves, often with a scarcely- 
perceptible fall from north to south, four great 
rivers form the most striking geographical features 
of these plains : the Dnieper, the Don, and farther 
eastward the mighty "Mother Volga" and her lesser 
companion, the Ural. "Her rivers," says Rambaud, 
"are the only allies of man against Russia's great 
enemy — distance." In winter their frozen surface, 
and in summer their broad tide, are the principal 
pathways from one part of this great land to an- 
other. 

It was upon the shores of the great river 
Dnieper, known to the Ancients as the Borys- 
thenes, that the first permanent Cossack commu- 
nities established had their settlements. 

*& &• & ' 3fe 3& •&• «&• 

vi* *I» ft* *i* *J* v|r yj* 

By slow degrees, under the increasing influence 
of peasant immigration from the North (bringing 
with it the religion of Russia and such rude civili- 
zation as the northern woods had developed) the 
Asiatic and "tribal" features of Cossack life began 
to disappear. During the early days of the XVI th 
century they had so strengthened their hold upon 
the broad lands lying between the Dnieper and the 
Don, that we find the terms "Free Cossacks of the 
Ukraine" and even "The Republic of the Don" 
used to describe their settlements, 



14 THE COSSACKS 

But the early condition of these wandering Cos- 
sack communities must have been a matter of scorn 
even to the primitive tribes of the Boujiak Tartars 
who were their neighbours. Family life or social or- 
ganization were all but impossible under the con- 
ditions of their harried existence. Some of these 
steppe bands (as we shall later observe in the case 
of the "Brotherhood" of the Zaporogian Cossacks, 
inhabiting the shores and islands of the Dnieper) 
even appear to have forbidden the presence of 
women in their camps. 

In the growing Cossack settlements or slovods 
only the sturdiest of the children were allowed to 
survive. As a preparation for a lifelong struggle 
with the forces of the steppes "their mothers were 
wont to plunge them at birth either into a snow- 
drift or in a mixture of salt and water."* None of 
the scanty provisions of the tribe could be wasted 
upon weaklings or those of unpromising physique. 
When scarcely able to walk, the young Cossacks 
were placed on horseback and "soon learned to 
swim wide rivers thus mounted" (ibid). At an 
early age they were only allowed food when by 
their unaided skill with bow and arrow they had 
brought down the wild game which supplied the 
family cook-pot. The clothing of the first Cossack 
tribesmen was contrived from sheepskins or the 
hides of wild beasts. Only the chieftains of the 

* Histoire de la Guerre des Kosaques. P. Chevalier. 
Paris, 1668. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE "FREE PEOPLE" 15 

highest rank were able to afford garments of 
coarsely woven cloth dyed in brilliant colours 
(ibid). In case of sickness the Cossack remedy 
was to mount on horseback and, after galloping 
across the plain until both steed and rider were ex- 
hausted, to open a small vein in the shoulder of 
their mount and drink the warm blood.* 

As their flocks and herds multiplied upon the 
generous pasturage there grew up in the former 
"Tartar desert" a characteristic light-hearted civil- 
ization peculiar to the steppes. In the Little Rus- 
sians of the present day we may still trace the 
manners and customs of this Free Cossack ancestry. 
Moreover as their ability to resist the encroaching 
tyranny of the Russian boyars increased, the Free 
Cossacks sought an early opportunity to renew re- 
lations with their European kinsmen. A common 
danger and their mutual hatred of the Turks and 
Tartars were forces tending to unite them with their 
Christian kindred the Russians and Poles. But in 
Poland the feudal land holders could find no place 
in their aristocratic state for freemen not of the 
noble classes, while in Russia the condition of the 
moujiki warned the Cossacks against the dangers 
of a too binding alliance with the Tsar. 

In order to secure the military aid of the Cos- 
sacks, the Polish kings were forced to allow them 

* A similar custom is noted by the Englishman Clarke 
in his Travels in the Ukraine in the latter part of the 
eighteenth century. 



16 THE COSSACKS 

to establish lists or "Registers" of "Free Soldiers" 
to whom claim of serfage was relinquished by the 
feudal lords. These latter, however, always claimed 
possession of the lands occupied by the Cossacks 
and their right to liberty as a caste was never recog- 
nized. This, as we shall later see, was the cause of 
the great uprising ending in the separation of the 
Cossack Ukraine from the Polish crown. 

In spite of these differences, however, the eastern 
Cossack steppes began, soon after the downfall of 
the Tartars, to be considered the defensive frontiers 
of both Poland and the Muscovite empire. The 
Cossack warriors of the Polish Ukraine, though 
clinging tenaciously to their liberties and denying 
any right on the part of an alien government to 
claim their services, often entered the feudal mili- 
tary companies of the Polish nobles as volunteers or 
paid men-at-arms, while farther to the eastward, 
their kindred entered the service of the Tsar. 

The last stronghold of the Tartars in Russia — 
Kazan — was captured by Ivan the Terrible after 
a long siege ending October 2, 1551. We find in 
the list of troops taking part in these operations 
the presence noted of a large contingent of Cos- 
sacks: "Cossacks of the town and Cossacks of the 
country." These together with the newly-formed 
Russian streltzi or regular troops took a prominent 
part in the assault. From 1553 to 1555 Ivan com- 
pleted his conquests along the whole course of the 
Volga, finally capturing Astrakhan near the shores 



THE ORIGIN OF THE "FREE PEOPLE" 17 

of the Caspian. Their admiration for the Tsar's 
exploits against the common enemy, and perhaps a 
wholesome realization of the fact that his armies 
now controlled an easy base of approach to the 
strongholds of their "republic," led the Cossacks 
inhabiting the shores of the Don to place them- 
selves under his protection. The Cossacks of the 
Dnieper remained, however, in the pay of Poland. 
Thus occurred the first great separation in the 
loose confederation of the "Free Companions of 
the Steppes."* 

After the more or less voluntary submission of 
the "Free Cossacks of the Don" the Russian Tsars 
soon began to make use of their matchless 
skill in frontier warfare. An arrangement mu- 
tually favorable was now perfected and the 
Cossacks became the basis of a system of de- 
fensive militia policing the steppes against the 
Crimean Tartars. Although the Muscovite 
peasants were brave and (above all) docile foot 
soldiers, their usefulness as cavalry was limited. 
Previous to the time when Cossacks were enrolled 
for this purpose, it had been found necessary — in 
order to defend the open frontiers of Muscovy — to 
mobilize every year a force of about 65,000 men. 
Owing to the fact that the rendezvous chosen lay 
on the banks of the river Oka, this was called the 
annual "banks service." In the early days this 
duty had been performed by the feudal levies of the 

* Rambaud, op. cit., page 223. 



18 THE COSSACKS 

great boyars, whose serf and peasant troops at- 
tended the annual musters unwillingly and often at 
great inconvenience to themselves during the har- 
vest season (a time therefore usually chosen by 
the Tartars for their raids). As early as 1571 a 
Russian boyar, Prince Borotinsky, began to em- 
ploy a system of mixed Cossack and militia patrols 
which appears to have differed but little from the 
military colonies or stanitzi of the later Cossack 
"armies." During the seasons less favorable to the 
Tartar raids a protective service alone was main- 
tained. This was called the "Watch and Post Ser- 
vice" and consisted of Cossacks living in rude block- 
houses linked together by small fortified camps. 
This first line of defense was intended, however, 
rather to impede the march of the Tartar raiders — 
and to give warning of their sudden coming — than 
to attempt any serious resistance. 

Mobile outposts composed of squads of two, four 
or six horsemen, to each of which was assigned a 
regular "ride" of about a day's journey, joined 
together the Cossack encampments or settlements 
which were generally set upon high places from 
whence an outlook could be kept across the plains. 
In each of these encampments horses stood ready 
saddled, so that upon the appearance of suspicious 
signs — the distant black dots in the yellow waste, 
denoting the scouts of the enemy, or the inevitable 
clouds of dust raised by the hoofs of their horses — 



THE ORIGIN OF THE "FREE PEOPLE" 19 

the news could be immediately communicated to 
the nearest fortified town, 

The importance of the services thus rendered will 
be realized when we consider that according to a 
contemporary English writer — Fletcher — the 
Tartars of the Crimea were accustomed to attack 
the confines of the Muscovite empire in considerable 
force once or twice every year. 

These raids were sometimes carried out at Trin- 
ity time, but more often during the harvest season. 
Now and again a winter raid was undertaken, when 
the frozen surface of the swamps and rivers facili- 
tated long marches, which only the endurance of the 
sturdy little Tartar ponies rendered possible. 
Through constant familiarity with the Russian bor- 
derland and the intervening steppes the Tartars 
learned to know the best trails and bridle tracks, 
and, most important of all, where the richest booty 
could most easily be obtained. "Avoiding all river 
crossings and picking their way along the trackless 
plateaus — at the same time carefully hiding their 
movements from the Muscovite steppe riders — 
they would suddenly penetrate in a solid mass into 
some populous district for a distance of about a 
hundred versts. Then turning in their track and, 
throwing out long wings to either side of the main 
body like a flock of wild geese — they would sweep 
away everything that lay in the path." 

Kaffa, in the Crimea, was the principal slave 
market where the prisoners captured in these raids, 



20 THE COSSACKS 

men, girls and children, (the latter carefully trans- 
ported in panniers carried for the purpose) were 
sold to the Turkish markets.* 

In protecting the Tsar's dominions against the 
intolerable suffering caused by these raids, the 
Cossack became an invaluable adjunct to the 
armies of the empire. When the Tartars ceased to 
be a menace a new era of discovery opened to Cos- 
sack enterprise; when, after absorbing all neigh- 
boring Russian states, the power of the Great 
Princes of Moscow was turned towards the East 
in an irresistible movement of expansion which was 
to extend across Asia to the continent of the New 
World. Cossack troops played the principal part 
in these expeditions. Leaders — of whom the Don- 
skoi hetman Yermak was the chief and prototype 
— crossed Siberia looking for a land passage. An 
obscure Cossack adventurer engaged in this quest 
was the first European to set eyes upon the 
Western coast of the great Alaskan peninsula. 
Had not the grey waters of the Straits of Behring 
rolled between — the matchless energy of these 
frontiersmen might have claimed the western coast 
of America for the Tsar. 

* (See Fletcher's "Travels: 9 ) 



CHAPTER II 

THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 

WHETHER the political condition of the 
early Cossack settlements of the Ukraine — 
the wide debatable frontier region lying between 
Poland, Russia and the Mussulman states to the 
south and west — ever entitled the "Free People" 
to be considered a separate state or nationality has 
been a subject of long and fruitless controversy. 
Matchless frontiersmen, the Cossacks could neither 
defend nor define the vague boundaries of 
their own "Free Steppes." At every crisis their 
undisciplined ways and hatred of a central author- 
ity led to internal divisions — and these in turn to 
inevitable subjection by one of the stronger nations 
surrounding them. 

During the reign of Ivan the Terrible the ma- 
jority of the Don Cossacks of their own will be- 
came subjects of the Russian Tsar while claiming 
privileges and immunities which have differenti- 
ated them from the Russian moujik to the present 
day. The Eastern branch of the Cossack race thus 
became part of the great Muscovite empire (al- 
though they appear to have continued to use the 
title of "republic" among themselves until a recent 
date. ) 

21 



22 THE COSSACKS 

During the first half of the sixteenth century 
the Cossacks inhabiting the shores of the Dnieper, 
found themselves inevitably drawn into more or 
less close "alliance" with the Poles against the raids 
of the Turks and Tartars. While resisting to the 
utmost the claims of the Polish magnates, whose 
vague feudal rights extended over a great part of 
the lands tilled and defended by the Cossacks, 
the border stanitzi or settlements remained gen- 
erally subject to the Polish crown. 

The kings of Poland soon sought to direct to 
their own advantage the courage and warlike ca- 
pacity which their Cossack neighbors had devel- 
oped through generations of warfare against the 
common enemy. Under King Sigismond a Cos- 
sack hetman (called by the Polish chroniclers Os- 
taphaeus) proposed to the Polish Senate that his 
countrymen be formed into a border guard or mili- 
tia to defend the frontiers of the kingdom against 
the Tartars. 

His plan contemplated the building of a flotilla 
on the Dnieper below the cataracts, capable of 
transporting two thousand men and four hundred 
horses to any threatened point on the long line of 
river frontier "which it was necessary to hold 
against these invaders." He assured the Polish 
king that even this small force disciplined in Cos- 
sack fashion could effectually stop the hordes of 
the Ghirai Khans of the Crimea, who "were every- 
where forced to cross the broad stream by swim- 



THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 23 

ming their horses and could thus be taken at a 
disadvantage." 

Under a successor of Ostaphseus, the Hetman 
Ruchinskov, the Cossacks of the Dneiper in return 
for a promised subsidy of lands and money from 
the Polish crown, adopted a method of frontier 
defense, which later formed the basis of the cele- 
brated military organization of the "Zaporo- 
gians." The general plan of this military system 
in many ways recalls the conditions of modern Cos- 
sack military service. To the older men, the weak- 
lings and to the veterans of several campaigns was 
reserved the privilege of family life in the Cossack 
settlements or stanitzi, scattered along the shores of 
the upper Dnieper, near Kiev. Here they culti- 
vated the soil and tended the flocks which formed 
the principal riches of the community. 

Meanwhile, the younger men gathered in armed 
camps and outposts on the islands below the cata- 
racts, ready for any martial adventure that might 
present itself. These military gatherings, or mus- 
ters, were especially frequented during the summer 
months or at any time when hostile raids might be 
expected. If no foray of the Turks or Tartars 
threatened the Cossacks' settlements — or the lands 
of the Polish republic they were paid to defend — 
expeditions were organized against the Turkish 
colonies on the shores of the Black Sea. Long 
Cossack boats, manned by chosen warriors, would 
then shoot the rapids of the Dnieper, falling with 



24 THE COSSACKS 

the suddenness of a thunderbolt upon some distant 
point of the Turkish littoral, even before rumours 
of their approach could reach the outposts of the 
enemy. 

In winter only the more strategic or threatened 
points among the islands were fortified and left in 
charge of a tried garrison consisting of a few thou- 
sand men. These chosen troops (called by the 
Poles Proesidenti) were the bands which became 
famous at a later day under the local name of 
Za Porogi — or men from "beyond the rapids." 
The principal camp of the Zaporogians protected 
by outposts and a rude fortress was known as the 
sitch. 

The early military organization and strategy of 
these Dnieper Cossacks was probably but little 
different from that of the Tartar levies. By the 
end of the sixteenth century, however, not only the 
garrisons of the sitch but also the troops and mil- 
itia stationed in the agricultural settlements along 
the upper Dnieper, had developed a characteristic 
system of military service. 

In the Hetman Bogdan Kostchinskoi, whose 
power was recognized by a majority of the free 
Cossacks settled along the Polish frontiers, King 
Stephen Bathory found a leader capable of bring- 
ing order and discipline out of the anarchy which 
had previously existed. Upon Bogdan he formally 
\ conferred the dignity of "Hetman of the Ukraine" 
^and at the same time presented him with splendid 



THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 25 

regalia composed of the Asiatic symbols recognized 
by the Cossacks as those of supreme authority, 
namely: the boulava or baton of the commander- 
in-chief; the buntchuk or horse-tail standard sim- 
ilar to that carried before the conquering generals 
of Genghis Khan. To these were added the tokens 
conferred on Polish frontier officials — a great seal 
of office and the standards that distinguished the 
mercenaries employed by the kings of Poland. 

In the agricultural settlements or stanitzi of the 
Ukraine the Cossack levies were divided into regi- 
ments or polku These, in turn, were subdivided 
into companies of one hundred men called sotnia, 
an organization which has persisted in the Cossack 
forces of the present day. Although a general of 
artillery, or obozni and a secretary, or pisari were 
nominated by the Polish king to assist the hetman 
(and at the same time to oversee the more technical 
details of military organisation) the warlike cus- 
toms of the Cossacks were not interfered with and 
their peculiar methods of fighting and discipline 
were generally maintained.* 

* In a "memorandum" written by the Palatine Jan So- 
bieski, for the instruction of his son Jan, the hero-king who 
was to raise Poland to the highest pinnacle of her glory, 
the contemporary Cossack civilization of the Polish fron- 
tier is thus described: "On their return from their nu- 
merous forays and campaigns against the enemy a part of 
these veteran warriors return to their headquarters in 
the islands of the Dnieper, but the great majority en- 



26 THE COSSACKS 

Desirous at first of building up the strength of 
the Cossack class, the Polish nobles allowed these 
tribesmen to extend their homesteads and settle- 
ments into southern Podolia and Volhynia, per- 
mitting them to enroll as "Free Cossacks" all of 
the fugitive Russian serfs and other strangers who 
succeeded in joining their forces. By this wise 
policy Bathory intended to interpose between the 
frontiers of Poland and the rising power of Russia 
a military state or province devoted to the inter- 
ests of the elective kingdom. At the same time, by 
bringing into cultivation the rich steppes of the 
Ukraine which had lain desolate for so many cen- 
turies through fear of the Tartar raiders, he opened 
new channels for the commerce of the Polish cities. 

riched by their booty think only of resuming the joys of 
family life. Thus they camp down with their wives and 
children about the cities belonging to the crown or the 
nobility, varying the monotony by holding among them- 
selves frequent assemblies where discussion often ends in 
bloody combat. ... In the town of Tritchimorov, 
near Kiev, which was granted to them by Stephen 
Bathory, in recognition of their services, they have their 
arsenal, their treasury and their common market or meet- 
ing place. Here they gather the spoils collected through 
their piracies from the Turkish cities of Roumelia and 
Asia Minor. Here, too, they carefully preserve the 
charters granted to them by the republic of Poland and 
the standards presented to their leaders by Polish kings 
on the occasions when they have been asked to take up 
their arms in defense of the state." (Salvandy, Jean 
Sobieski. Vol. I, page 182.) 



THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 27 

That these wise plans were not destined to be fully- 
realized was due to several causes difficult to fore- 
see, 

i In considering the history of the Ukraine, a dis- 
tinction must be made between the agricultural 
] Cossack settlements of the Upper Dnieper and the 
( outposts or garrisons of the "Za-Porogi" to which 
the former were tributary. The cataracts of the 
Lower Dnieper are divided just below the modern 
city of Ekaterinoslav by an archipelago of hun- 
dreds of rocky islands covered with a shaggy 
growth of stunted timber and underbrush. To 
navigate the secret channels of this watery laby- 
rinth requires rare skill with the paddle, a knowl- 
edge to be obtained only through constant fa- 
miliarity. By throwing up a few entrenchments of 
logs and earthworks any of these islands, isolated 
by the rapids, was capable of offering an almost 
impregnable defense against the attacks of an 
army not supplied with artillery. 

The principal camp or sitch of the Cossack gar- 
rison was established on one of the larger islands, 
or at some inaccessible point on the river. This 
main camp was, moreover, frequently transferred 
from one place to another so that the mystery 
which surrounded its location hid the varying num- 
bers of its garrison and added to the difficulties of 
attack. 

The military capabilities and peculiar organiza- 
tion of the Zaporogian Cossacks was a source of 



28 THE COSSACKS 

considerable interest and inquiry among contem- 
porary military authorities. Many writers of the 
eighteenth century — wholly ignorant of their real 
condition — compared these famous frontier troops 
to military orders of chivalry such as the Knights 
of the Sword in Lithuania, or even the Knights of 
Malta, Others compared them to the "Free 
Archers'* of Charles the Seventh, or the "military 
colonies" of Sparta and of the early Grecian states. 
As Lesur points out, a more reasonable and mod- 
ern parallel is to be found in that strange republic 
of filibusters who almost contemporaneously es- 
tablished their piratical state among the islands of 
the West Indies. If this comparison does some in- 
justice to the Zaporogians (to whom must be al- 
lowed the merit of holding in check, at a critical 
time, the ravages of the Mussulman invaders) it 
will appear more reasonable if viewed in the light 
of the intolerable nuisance to which their preten- 
sions gave rise at a later date. For, while the Cos- 
sack settlements, as we shall presently see, became 
in the course of time absorbed by the civilization of 
their Russian neighbours, the "Free Companions" 
of the sitch refused to adapt themselves in any way 
to the new modes of life made necessary by the 
passing of frontier conditions. 

Long after their territory had become sur- 
rounded by peaceful agricultural colonists, the 
Zaporogians continued to live their own boisterous 
life as in the days when the Tartar raids almost 
hourly threatened the community. 



THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 29 

As far as the author is aware, no historian has 
ever attempted to trace the development of the 
crude system of island outposts until these became 
merged in the famous military brotherhood of the 
semi-independent Zaporogians, or, as they gen- 
erally styled themselves, "The Free and Independ- 
ent Community Beyond the Rapids." * Neverthe- 
less, the history of the long struggle between Po- 
land and Russia for the fertile provinces of the 
Ukraine is very largely concerned with the doings 
of this turbulent faction among the Cossack "na- 
tion." To form a true idea of the appearance of the 
famous sitch or stronghold one must imagine rather 
an encampment or gathering of rude huts set down 
amidst a clearing in the forest. These were de- 
fended by the rapids of the Dnieper, or by rude 
earthworks in no way recalling a mediaeval for- 
tress. Great sheds or barracks built of saplings, 
covered with horse or cow-hides, sheltered the gar- 
rison and divided it into definite units or kourens. 
The members of each houren sleeping under one 
roof, eating their kasha or buckwheat meal from a 
single great kettle, enjoyed in common a kind of 
boisterous family life. In spite of the iron disci- 
pline which their exposed and dangerous position 
rendered necessary, the government of the sitch 
was jealously maintained on the most democratic 

* For a general sketch of Zaporogian "history" see a 
recently published pamphlet by Professor D. N. Evar- 
itzky of Kharkov. 



30 THE COSSACKS 

lines. The chief of this warlike republic was known 
as the koshovoy ataman. Although possessed of 
almost unlimited powers, this officer was liable at 
any moment to be deposed from his high position 
by a public meeting of the brotherhood. These 
assemblies were called together by the most in- 
formal means — the clashing of cymbals or the 
tumultuous cries of any party strong enough to 
rouse the general interests. Together with his aide- 
de-camp or jessoul and his clerk, or pissar, the 
koshovoy ataman might thus be summoned on the 
most frivolous pretext to stand before the as- 
sembled garrison. Taking his station beneath the 
horsetail standard that denoted his rank, he was 
expected to wait, cap in hand, the outcome of the 
noisy debate which decided whether or not his ad- 
ministration was satisfactory to the Free Com- 
panions. The ceremony just described was gen- 
erally preceded by a drinking bout wherein quanti- 
ties of gorilka, brandy (with which the hardy war- 
riors braced themselves when called upon to make 
any momentous decision) , were consumed as a nec- 
essary preliminary to the mental effort required. 
It is, therefore, not surprising to learn that such 
elections, more often than not, ended in bloodshed. 
Whenever the tumult seemed to indicate that 
their services were no longer required, it was the 
custom of the officials composing an unpopular "ad- 
ministration" formally to salute their comrades, and 
clapping on their shaggy sheepskin headgear, to 



THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 31 

return to the ranks of their own kouren thus re- 
suming their rights as Free Cossacks. 

"The election of a new koshovoy ataman then 
proceeded under conditions which made the ac- 
ceptance of this high honour as humiliating as pos- 
sible for the successful candidate. The kouren 
from which the ataman was to be chosen haviner 
first been decided upon, an individual member was 
next singled out by the noisy shouts of his ad- 
herents. Ten of the most insolent and intoxi- 
cated elders of the general assembly were usually 
deputed to announce to the new chieftain the hon- 
our conferred upon him. It was no false modesty 
that often caused the responsibilities of this high po- 
sition to be declined. Like Caesar, etiquette de- 
manded that the newly elected koshovoy should at 
least twice refuse the dangerous distinction offered 
him. It was only after being knocked half sense- 
less by the back slapping and rough congratula- 
tions of his electors that he might properly consent 
to be dragged beneath the red horsetail standard 
where the final indignity connected with his in- 
stallation awaited him. The oldest Cossacks 
present, gathering up handfuls of mud from the 
river bank, proceeded in turn to smear with this 
filth the beard and face of their newly-chosen 
leader. In this condition he was obliged — though 
now enjoying the dignity of remaining covered be- 
fore the uncapped assembly — to make a long 
speech thanking his comrades for the honours liter- 
ally thrust upon him. 



32 THE COSSACKS 

As additional safeguard to the democratic in- 
stitutions of the Zaporogians, it was further de- 
creed (by laws none the less binding because only 
part of the unwritten traditions of the community) 
that except during an active campaign the kosh- 
ovoy ataman should exercise no real authority in the 
sitch. When, however, war had once been declared, 
even his most despotic commands were implicitly 
obeyed. 

In ordinary times the administration of the 
affairs of the Zaporogian sitch lay in the hands of 
a council of subordinate atamans elected by the 
different kourens. These were generally selected 
from among the most popular members of the 
community and only kept themselves in office by ex- 
ercising arts of the basest flattery and slavish gen- 
erosity. No ataman might receive any pay, ex- 
cept the privilege of renting stalls to the Jews and 
other traders venturesome enough to establish 
themselves among the Zaporogians. Commerce 
was held in so little esteem that nearly all human 
rights were denied these despised shopkeepers. 
Any moment might see their stock in trade looted 
before their eyes, yet the high prices which after 
some successful raid the Cossacks were liable to 
toss to the "peddlers" rather than demean them- 
selves by bargaining, always attracted a motley 
crowd of vendors willing to submit to all the hu- 
miliations which might be heaped upon them in 
return for the rich profits to be gained. 



THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 33 

Although these periods of iron discipline and the 
relaxations of ensuing debauch were characteristic 
of the life of the sitch, contemporary writers give 
the Zaporogians credit for certain homely virtues. 
They were always honest with each other. Con- 
victed thieves were treated with cruel severity: 
lashed to a post in the centre of the camp, if they 
or their friends were unable to make restitution at 
the end of a period of three days, they might be 
beaten to death by their victims. The murderer 
of a comrade was chained to his victim's corpse and 
buried alive in the same grave. But besides these 
cruel laws born of the necessities of early times, 
there grew up a more civilized code based upon the 
celebrated medieval "Institutes of Magdeburg," 

— regulations which were applied in the merchants' 
quarters of the Polish towns. 

- A custom of the sitch doubtless growing out of 
the dangers constantly threatening the first garri- 
sons and the state of constant watchfulness and 
alarm in which they were forced to live, has gained 
no little attention from contemporary writers. This 
was the law rigorously excluding women, under 
pain of death, from the community of the Zaporo- 
gians. If a Zaporogian desired to take up the 
burdens and pleasures of family life he returned to 
the Cossack settlements, while his name was inex- 
orably erased from the rolls of the Free Company. 
From the accounts of this custom many ludicrous 
errors have arisen. Some writers have described the 



34 THE COSSACKS 

Zaporogians as a kind of monkish militia, con- 
stantly at war with the infidels in the defense of 
Christianity. Others have described them as a re- 
ligious order of chivalry with vows of chastity re- 
sembling those taken by the Knights of the Sword, 
who ruled in Lithuania. 

Although any parade of piety seems strangely 
out of place in such a rough community, it was 
considered necessary for each new recruit to be- 
long to the Orthodox Greek religion. Matters of 
doctrine, we read, were the cause of many bloody 
quarrels among them. Every year two priests and 
their attendant deacons were sent from a monastery 
near Kiev to the encampment charged with cele- 
brating a daily mass. "A deep bass voice and 
ability to drink a fair share of Cossack brandy" 
were, according to Lesur, considered part of the 
necessary equipment for ministering to the spir- 
itual needs of this strange parish. In the face of the 
fanatical religious zeal of the Turks and Tartars 
the Zaporogians could hardly allow themselves to 
be outdone in this respect. To the battle cry of 
"Allah! Allah!" the Zaporogians answered with the 
rallying cry of "Jesus!" On the banners of these 
strange crusaders were emblazoned the symbols of 
favourite saints and martyrs of the Ukraine. Their 
feuds with the Turkish colonies established on the 
Black Sea, were embittered by religious hatred as 
well as love of plunder.* 

* One of the requirements occasionally demanded of 
candidates desiring to enter the Zaporogian brotherhood 



THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 35 

In their fragile river craft they set out fearlessly 
across the Black Sea in reckless forays against the 
Turk: protecting the low sides of their canoes in 
stormy weather by mats made of reeds, or else by 
lashing their boats together to form catamarans. 
These typical Cossack boats, or cholni, were often 
sixty feet in length. They were built in shipyards 
hidden among the reedy islands of the lower 
Dnieper by skilful artisans held in high respect 
among Zaporogians. Often as many as fifteen 
oars on a side were manned by Cossack rowers, 
while a small cannon was set on a platform at the 
prow. On account of their size and "handiness" 
the Cossack "navy" was capable of disconcerting 
manoeuvres unknown to Turkish strategy, so that 
even the great war galleys of the "All-conquering" 
Sultan Murad fell victims to their attack. 

These exploits, for which enthusiastic volunteers 
were never lacking, kept up the military spirit and 
discipline of the Zaporogians. Whenever a short 
peace with the Tartars of the Crimea (the foe with 
which they were most concerned) permitted such 
relaxations, some chieftain was always ready to 
lead an expedition against the Sultan. Even when 
their allies were at peace with the Porte, it was 
impossible to prevent these raids on the "Land 

was the almost unbelievable feat of paddling a canoe up 
stream against the current of certain formidable rapids of 
the Lower Dnieper, still pointed out by the local peas- 
antry. 



36 THE COSSACKS 

of the Infidel." In order to avoid unnecessary 
quarrels, it was only after returning to the sitch 
that the division of the booty took place. On such 
occasions the whole community would indulge in 
a huge masquerade. Their usual rough and tat- 
tered garments were then replaced with silken 
Turkish cloaks and the costly velvet cloths of Da- 
mascus. Rich damasks were ruthlessly cut up to 
make zippoun, the characteristic trousers of por- 
tentous width affected by all true Cossacks of the 
old school. Thus arrayed and with their shaggy 
calpackSj, decorated with ostrich feathers and jew- 
elled aigrets, the Cossacks would march in proces- 
sion to pay their respects to the neighboring settle- 
ments, forcing all whom they met upon the road 
to drink with them — Polish nobles or Cossack 
peasants alike. "Four or five days were spent in 
drinking, dancing and boastful discourses. Every- 
where the Cossacks were accompanied by a rude 
orchestra and by serving men bearing huge jars of 
beer, hydromel (*) and Cossack brandy. Thus, 
at the end of a few days all the profits of their 
perilous expeditions would be dissipated."** 
****** 

When after the Cossack revolution led by Bog- 
dan Hmielnicki, the principal Cossack settlements 
of the Ukraine passed under the Russian rule, it 

* This delicious sounding beverage was a fermented 
mixture of honey and water. 

** See Lesur, op. cit., Vol. I, page 289. 



THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 37 

became apparent (especially after the rise of the 
Romanov dynasty) that there was no place for such 
an aggressively independent community as that of 
the Zaporogians within the borders of the Empire 
ruled by the Tsar. Unlike the loosely held frontiers 
of the Polish kingdom, the Russian marches were 
guarded by imperial troops. Yet the remoteness of 
the Cossack settlements and the position occupied 
by the stick, preserved for a century or more the 
"national" pretensions of the Zaporogians. But 
the later history of this warlike brotherhood pre- 
sents only a series of episodes without signs of po- 
litical development or progress. The rare docu- 
ments of this period, preserved in the convents of 
the Ukraine, are records of achievements startling 
in their bravery, sometimes chivalrous, but often 
base and cruel. The love of personal freedom, at a 
time when their neighbours were bound in shameful 
subjection, alone gives character and unity to their 
story. 

An attempt will now be made to give, in the 
language and spirit of the original report (made 
to the Ataman Dorochenko by the great Zapor- 
ogian koskevoy Sirko), some account of a famous 
foray of the "Free Companions" against the 
Crimean Tartars and their allies. This document 
may be taken as a typical example of the rare 
"sources" of Cossack history which have survived 
to the present day — although the golden days of 
the stick at the close of the seventeenth century and 



38 THE COSSACKS 

the beginning of the eighteenth were probably filled 
with enisodes similar to the one described. The 
author has resisted all temptation (in the interest of 
"historical truth") to tamper with the characteristic 
bombast which marks the original. These rare 
written records of Cossack days and the joyous 
"diplomatic" correspondence which accompanies 
them are, moreover, of especial interest as having 
suggested to the great Russian historical painter 
Repnin, the subject for his well-known Cossack 
pictures in the Tretiakov Gallery of Moscow. 

****** 

"It was only when the Dnieper was filled with 
floating ice floes, and the steppes covered with 
soft snow that the ever-vigilant Cossack garrison 
of the sitch could feel themselves in a measure safe 
from the attacks of their implacable enemies, the 
Tartars of the Crimea. During this season the 
fast of St. Phillip, which occurs shortly before 
Christmas, was always strictly kept by the members 
of the orthodox Zaporogian brotherhood. Follow- 
ing this period of abstinence, if the weather and the 
conditions of the plains afforded their usual pro- 
tection, it was an equally honoured custom for the 
Cossacks to indulge in a period of feasting and 
drunkenness." 

In the year 1675, profiting by intimate knowl- 
edge of their habits gained by many years of war- 
fare, the Khan of the Crimea determined to attack 



THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 39 

the community of the sitch at this time. Turkish 
troops had been loaned to the Khan of the Crimea 
by the Turkish Sultan for reinforcements and a 
serious attempt was to be made to put an end to the 
depredation of the Cossacks in Turkish territory. 

By following the course of the Dnieper, yet re- 
maining at a distance of several miles from its 
frozen banks, the vigilance of the Cossack patrols 
was avoided and a large force of Crimean Tartars 
and Turkish Janissaries reached the neighbourhood 
of the Zaporogian encampment unnoticed by its 
defenders. 

In judging of the numbers which composed this 
important expedition, we can only depend on the 
evidence in the Cossack accounts. Let us then 
state, once for all, that (if the worthy Cossack 
pissar or clerk can be believed) "on one side were 
engaged no less than 15,000 Janissaries or regular 
Turkish troops," besides a "multitude" of Tartar 
tribesmen, while the usual winter garrison of the 
sitch did not, as a rule, exceed 2,000 men. 

On arriving at a spot nearly opposite the island 
fortress occupied by the Zaporogians, the "per- 
fidious" Mussulmen had the good fortune to find 
the entire Cossack outpost guarding this important 
point overcome by their libations in honour of the 
"Holy Day" preceding. (The Cossack historian, 
in strong and convincing language here sets forth 
the iniquity of an attack made at such a time!!) 
Through the "base advantage" thus gained nearly 



40 THE COSSACKS 

the entire force of Janissaries and "numerous" Tar- 
tars were enabled actually to penetrate undis- 
covered within the narrow streets of the encamp- 
ment where they proceeded to surround each of the 
kouren, or wooden barracks, in which the Cossack 
companies were housed. It was at this juncture 
that their presence was made known to the gar- 
rison by a Cossack named Chefchika who, "moved 
by God" chanced to glance out of a window and, 
by the light reflected from the snow, saw to his 
"grim amazement," the silent ranks of the enemy 
drawn up and awaiting the signal to attack. 

His courage in no way affected by this sight, he 
proceeded quietly to awaken his sleeping comrades. 
It was determined that the best method of meeting 
the attack would be to place at the few available 
windows the most skilful of the Cossack 
marksmen, while the others should load and pass 
to them guns and pistols in rapid succession. This 
system of defense in which the other hourens pres- 
ently joined, was apparently so disconcerting to 
the Turkish troops, that when the gallant defenders 
sallied out for a final assault they found only a 
demoralized mob of the enemy upon whom to 
wreak their vengeance. 

****** 

Following the example of the Cossack historian 
we shall pass over the minor tactical details of the 
struggle which ensued, confining ourselves to the 



THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 41 

glorious outcome. The results of this indiscreet 
invasion, according to the chronicler, was a "loss 
of no less than 13,500 men among the Janissaries 
alone, while on the Cossack side a loss of but fifty 
killed is recorded, besides eighty wounded" (sic). 
The first pious duty of the Cossacks was to bury 
their own dead in consecrated ground, while the 
wounded were given over "to the care of the barber." 
In the meantime some two thousand cavalrymen 
started out in pursuit of the Khan of Crimea, who, 
on the defeat of his Turkish allies, had "fled like 
a wolf" to his distant stronghold. To judge by 
the account we have quoted, one of the principal 
"annoyances" caused by this invasion was the 
question of how to dispose of the numerous bodies, 
of slain Tartars and Janissaries, which encumbered 
the streets of the Cossack encampment. These, 
after much discussion (recorded at even greater 
length in the original manuscript than the account 
of the actual fighting itself) were pushed under the 
ice of the river Dnieper through holes laboriously 
cut for that purpose, whence they were swept away 
by the swift current. 

The "facts" contained in the above short sum- 
mary are at least borne out by the tone of the cor- 
respondence which ensued between the Zaporogian 
Cossacks and the Turkish Sultan, whose disloyal 
actions during a time of peace had been so signally 
punished. One letter reads as follows ; 



42 THE COSSACKS 

"To the Khan of Tartary 

Our Unworthy Neighbour: 

We, the Cossack troops of the stick, would never 
have conceived the idea of entering upon this war 
had you not commenced hostilities. You have sent 
against us (what treachery!) not only your savage 
Tartars, but also the troops of that old fool, the 
Sultan. Had it not been for the intervention of 
our constant friend, the great Lord Jesus — we 
might all have perished in our sleep! Now, since 
your disloyal ways have brought upon you dis- 
aster — refrain from troubling us. Otherwise, we 
will treat you after our fashion, and that of our 
noble Cossack ancestors, by beating down your own 
gates ! 

We wish your Majesty a long and prosperous 
reign. 

Signed by Ivan Sirko, — Koshovoy Ataman 
(for the whole community) " 

At the same time a letter was written to the Sul- 
tan in Constantinople, Mahmoud III — beginning 
with a parody of his imperial titles as set forth at 
the beginning of a letter admonishing the Cossacks 
to keep the peace. The epithets show a cunning 
knowledge of what would be most insulting to a 
pious Moslem. 

"Thou Turkish Devil: 

Brother and Companion of Lucifer himself! 



THE ZAPOROGIAN COSSACKS 43 

Who dares call himself Lord of the Christians — 
but is not! Babylonish cookl Brewer of Jeru- 
salem! Goat-keeper of the herds of Alexandria! 
Swineherd of Great and Lesser Egypt! Ar- 
menian Sow and Tartar Goat! Insolent Unbe- 
liever! May the Devil Take you! The Cossacks 
refuse every demand and petition that you now 
make to them — or that you may in future invent. 
Thank us for condescending to answer you! 

(Signed) Ivan Sirko 

and the Cossack troops." 

The originals of the above epistles, which, for 
obvious reasons, have been considerably condensed 
and modified, are to be found in the annals of Kiev, 
Vol. II, pp. 371, 382, 1891. See also a pamphlet 
published in Petrograd in 1902 by Professor I. 
Evarnitzky. 



CHAPTER III 

YERMAK AND THE COSSACK 
CONQUEST OF SIBERIA 

ACCORDING to Lesur, the French historian 
(who, at Napoleon's bidding, wrote a careful 
and erudite "History of the Cossacks") it was the 
singular destiny of the Hetman Yermak and his 
Donskoi followers to add the immense empire of 
Siberia to the Russian crown, rather by chance than 
through any deliberate plan of discovery or con- 
quest. In the course of an attempt to escape the 
vengeance they had incurred by breaking the stern 
peace declared along the Volga by Ivan the Ter- 
rible, this band of marauding Cossacks were cut 
off by the Tsar's forces from access to the "Free 
Steppes" and obliged to ascend the course of the 
mighty river towards the unknown North. Here 
Yermak repeated among the aborigines of the Arc- 
tic, exploits only comparable with the adventures 
met with a generation before by Pizarro during his 
conquest of Peru.* 

The vast land known as Siberia covers nearly 
one-quarter of the habitable globe. Until the latter 
half of the fifteenth century this great expanse of 

* See Lesur, op, cit. Vol. I, Page 224. 

44 




PQ 
w 

i— i 

W 

« 



YERMAK 45 

territory was as unknown to Europe as the track- 
less ocean crossed by Columbus. About the time 
that the continent of America was discovered the 
Russians first entered into relations with what was 
then called the land of "Iougra," the wide "back 
country" beyond the low chain of the Urals. Upon 
the savage tribes of this borderland the free bur- 
ghers of "Lord Novgorod the Great" laid a 
tribute of skins and precious metals.* 

In an ill-chosen moment — just after the con- 
quest of Kazan (1556) and before Ivan the Ter- 
rible had disbanded his victorious troops — a Si- 
berian prince named ladiger attempted to evade 
the promised yearly tax formerly paid to the re- 
public of Novgorod, whose liberties the Tsars of 
Moscow had trampled underfoot but a short 
time before. The loss of the tribute, paid by the 
thirty thousand subjects of the Siberian princeling, 
— which had been set at a "marten skin per inhabi- 
tant," — directed the attention of the redoubtable 
Tsar towards the resources of the vast unknown 
territories to the eastward of his empire. 

In the district of Oustioug, north of Viatka, a 
family of Russian hoyars of Tartar origin, the 
Stroganovs, had for several generations exploited 
salt and iron mines. Although belonging to the 
merchant class, an exception seems to have been 
made in their favour from the rigid policy of cen- 

* Waliszewski, op, cit., p. 469. See also "Siberia" by 
M. P. Price. 



46 THE COSSACKS 

tralization adopted by the princes of Moscow. The 
Stroganovs not only exercised "the rights of High 
Justice and Low," but were also allowed to main- 
tain an armed force, on a footing which prepared 
them either for trade or war with the neighbouring 
Siberian chieftains. Their venture appears to have 
prospered, for, in 1558, Anakievitch Stroganov 
(according to records preserved in Moscow), pe- 
titioned Ivan the Terrible for a "further concession 
of 106 square versts on the shores of the Kama" 
where he proposed "to erect a fort against the 
Tartars."* 

* In October 1915 the author had occasion to visit 
the town of Veliki Oustioug, the old capital of the country 
ruled by the Stroganovs. This place, once so remote, 
could then be reached, without hardship, by following 
the new railroad connecting the town of Kotlas with the 
Trans-Siberian Line. This town (almost as ancient as 
Veliki Oustioug) at the outbreak of the World War en- 
joyed great, if ephemeral, prosperity on account of the 
heavy river traffic which grew up along the northern 
Dvina. Here it is necessary for the traveller to change 
to a river steamer which, after fighting the slow current 
of the Oustioug River for a day and a night, finally lands 
its passengers at the ancient border city, whence Yermak 
set forth on his conquest of Siberia. 

The first view of Veliki-Oustioug — the pious silhouette 
of the town's thirty or more great churches and convents 
suddenly breaking the monotonous sky line of stunted 
fir trees which for miles border the almost uninhabited 
shores of the river — presents an interesting and unfore- 
seen incident in the journey. For every score of the 



YERMAK 47 

At this place in the year 1579 a band of 640 
Cossacks suddenly appeared desiring to be en- 
rolled in the private army of the Stroganovs. 
These adventurers were under the double leader- 
ship of a Cossack named Ivan Koltso (who, accord- 
cording to some authorities, had not long before 
been condemned to ignominous death by the Tsar's 
orders), and a hardly more reputable hetman 
named Yermak. The name of the latter, preserved 
in stirring popular ballads and bylines, was later 
to typify the pioneering and imperialistic genius 
of the Russian race. Whether the legendary ex- 
ploits of this illustrious brigand represent the ac- 
tual history of an individual, or whether, as some 
Russian historians maintain, we have in Yermak 
one of those composite heroes to the making of 
whose reputation the fame of half a score of lesser 
pioneers has been sacrificed, is a fact impossible to 
verify at the present day. 

Aside from their sudden and suspicious appear- 
ance in the district administered by the Stroganovs, 

present inhabitants of "Oustioug the Great" there exists 
at least one spacious church or monastery! Local tra- 
dition declares that most of these structures — erected 
by adventurers returning from the Siberian trail as a 
thank offering for the dangers they had escaped — rep- 
resent not so much the piety of their builders as the pru- 
dent expiation of the sins committed in the mysterious 
beyond: the cleansing, as it were, of conscience and for- 
tune before their builders resumed the humdrum life of 
Holy Russia. 



48 THE COSSACKS 

all that was known of Yermak and his Cossack 
companions can hardly have induced these pros- 
perous merchants to invite the newcomers to re- 
main longer than necessary in the vicinity of their 
warehouses filled with stores of precious furs and 
metals. During the dark winter months following 
their arrival, the merchants appear to have urged 
upon their guests the glorious advantages to be 
gained by a campaign against the forest tribes, 
whose villages and hunting grounds lay just be- 
yond this frontier station. In proof of these state- 
ments they showed the eager Cossacks nuggets of 
placer gold and specimens of those strangely col- 
oured, semi-precious minerals of the Urals which 
even modern geologists are often at a loss to value 
or classify. Among the Voguls, Ostiaks and other 
peoples of Finnish origin against whom the Strog- 
anovs had for generations carried on their inde- 
cisive forays, the Cossacks were assured that gold 
was "hardly prized at all." Other booty, it was 
urged, such as furs and mastodon ivory, might read- 
ily be captured from such cowardly and ill-armed 
forces. It is, moreover, probable that the Cossack 
leaders (at least one of whom still felt a noose 
tickling his neck) were only too glad of an excuse 
to put further leagues of wilderness between the 
avenging troops of Ivan the Terrible and their own 
guilty persons. 

Unknown to Yermak at this time, his most heroic 
contest was to be waged with the natural diffi- 



YERMAK 49 

culties of the wilderness. Such a struggle was less 
suitable, perhaps, for the poetic treatment of the 
bylines than his battles with the aborigines. But 
any traveller who has had occasion to visit the 
country lying about the Urals will find, in 
the Cossack leader's persistent courage as an 
explorer, a subject of admiration which will 
out-rival his military achievements. The native 
tribes they first encountered — unlike the more 
warlike subjects of the Tartar princes further to 
the southward — could not oppose any formidable 
resistance to the better armed Cossacks. Like 
the scattered remnants of their descendants 
who survive to the present day, the Voguls and 
Ostiaks lived in family groups dispersed in the 
deepest recesses of the forest. They were small of 
stature, cowardly and anxious to live at peace with 
their neighbours. In addition to the real dangers 
of the wilderness they inhabited, a thousand other 
foolish terrors assailed them through their super- 
stitious belief in forest demons, wood sprites and 
other fantastic creatures, whom they propitiated by 
a system of complicated idolatrous rites. These 
beliefs forming their only religion led them to look 
upon their chiefs or medicine men with uncanny 
reverence. 

Skilful hunters and trappers — so that their 
filthy bodies were covered with the rare furs of 
mink, otter and royal ermine — their only weapons 
of defense were bows and arrows. Against such ad- 



50 THE COSSACKS 

versaries the firearms of the Cossacks, like those 
carried by the conquistador es of Peru, were quick to 
establish a terrible superiority.* 

The almost impenetrable forest through which 
Yermak and his followers were forced step by step, 
to cut their way, the swollen streams dashing 
towards the Arctic Sea, across which they were 
obliged to pass, and the deep ravines filled with 
chevaux de f rises of fallen timber, were the difficul- 
ties which at first combined — rather than the feeble 
though growing resistance of the native tribes — to 

* On a journey through the great northern forest 
belt of Russia referred to in a previous footnote, the 
author encountered at every station along the new rail- 
way the descendants of these tribes, the "Mordvins" 
and "Tchouds" of the present day. These strange wood- 
land creatures — flat-faced, slant-eyed, with colourless 
whity-blond complexions — present many notable dif- 
ferences from the more robust Russian moujiks. It is 
interesting, however, to note the physical characteristics 
which this inferior stock have transmitted to the Slav race. 
The influence of Russian civilization is, however, fast 
spreading to these isolated districts. The men generally 
wear the outdoor dress of the Russian lower classes. The 
women, the conservative force in every community, 
still affect the ancient tribal costumes: coarse-woven 
gay-coloured shawls covering homespun smocks or 
long shirts. Wherever concessions have been made to 
modern "style," all, as though by common consent, wear 
town-made material of the same bright pattern and 
colours, clearly exhibiting the transition from tribal cos- 
tume to individual dress. 



YERMAK 51 

impede the eastward march of the Cossacks. In- 
deed the short northern summer was wholly passed 
in contending with these natural obstacles, and 
Yermak realized the necessity of returning once 
more to his winter quarters with the Stroganovs. 
To the latter this second winter's visit must have 
been even less welcome than the first. Nor did the 
diplomatic merchants cease their efforts to en- 
courage the Cossacks to persist in their adventure 
of looking for a practicable pathway toward the 
unknown riches in the "beyond." 

When the second slow-coming springtime had 
arrived Yermak had succeeded in enforcing a 
system of rigid military discipline among his un- 
ruly followers. Attempts at desertion, or diso- 
bedience of orders were punished by cruel pen- 
alties. According to Lesur, the crime of blas- 
phemy was one of those most pitilessly forbidden. 
By Yermak's orders a portable altar with an ikon 
of St. Nicholas "the Wonder- Worker" was con- 
structed to accompany the little army during its 
second expedition and before the Holy Ikons a 
renegade monk, assisted by two unfrocked priests, 
regularly celebrated a forest mass on Sundays and 
Holy Days. 

The delays of the second winter also enabled the 
Cossacks to fit themselves out with a little train of 
portable artillery whose strange thunders (and the 
terrifying clouds of thick smoke given off by the 
coarse gunpowder manufactured by the Strog- 



52 THE COSSACKS 

anovs) doubled its effectiveness against the savage 
enemy. 

The Stroganovs, by exciting the cupidity and 
ambition of the Cossacks simplified the task of their 
leader. Tales of the riches awaiting them, once 
the forest-guarded mountain chain of the Urals 
could be crossed, were eagerly listened to during 
the long winter nights of enforced idleness. Thus, 
from an undisciplined band of brigands and 
ruffians Yermak's genius for leadership welded a 
small but highly tempered little army capable of 
resisting the hardships they were to encounter for 
the second time. 

Yet the end of a second summer's campaign 
found Yermak only a little farther advanced than 
at the end of the previous year. On the banks of 
the Ka or Silver River (a stream which has since 
become famous for its fisheries) he decided to pass 
the winter in an entrenched camp. This enabled 
him, in spite of terrible sufferings from the cold, to 
push on with the first signs of spring, his route 
following the course of the river Toura. 

Until this point had been reached the principal 
difficulties met with on Yermak's line of march 
were the natural obstacles and the problem 
of obtaining provisions. But the expedition now 
found itself confronted by more valiant enemies. 
The Tartar and Tartar-led tribes along the shores 
of the stream they were obliged to follow offered 
a stubborn and unexpected resistance. The whole 



YERMAK 53 

summer was consumed in bitter skirmishes with this 
new enemy (1580). 

The third long northern winter was passed in 
the little town of Tchingis, near the modern city 
of Tioumen. The Tartar inhabitants of this place 
had amassed a considerable store of grain, and pos- 
sessed besides, flocks of sheep and cattle, so that 
for the Cossacks the winter passed pleasantly 
enough. Spring found them descending the swollen 
Toura (seeking to gain the course of a stream now 
recognized as the Tobol, whose waters were re- 
ported to be navigable) and here Yermak and his 
followers encountered for the first time an army 
formidable in numbers and equipment. No less 
than six confederated Tartar chieftains gathering 
their subject Vogul and Ostiak tribesmen, awaited 
the coming of the Cossacks in an easily def endable 
pass. Fortunately the latter were now able to 
build and launch upon the lower Toura the ''long 
boats" which many of their number had learned to 
manoeuvre with skill among the rocks and rapids 
of the Dneiper. 

The forces of the enemy, defending every rocky 
pass and difficult portage, though again and again 
dispersed, returned with fresh re-enforcements to 
dispute the way. The more faint-hearted among 
the Cossacks even began to talk of returning to 
Russia. But Yermak could now afford to peer at 
the protests of these malcontents. The intrepid 
leader at last possessed an unanswerable argument: 



54 THE COSSACKS 

pointing out the impossibility of returning against 
the current of the long rapids that lay behind them. 
In their dismal councils even the mutineers decided 
that the only safety lay in pressing forward towards 
the unknown.* 

We now come to an incident in Yermak's voyage 
made famous by the Russian ballad singers — the 
telling of which never fails to draw a shout of 
laughter from their hearers. In the peasant izbas 
of the North or the Cossack villages of the Ukraine, 
the cleverly planned ruse invented by the hero 
Yermak to disengage his men from the ambuscade 
laid by the Tartars and Voguls is always a favour- 
ite incident of folk-history. At a place where the 
little Cossack army was forced to pass through a 
long fall of rapids (a point where the Tobol rushes 
between high narrow banks) the Tartars had raised 
a barrier of rocks and logs "clamped together with 
iron chains," meanwhile entrenching themselves on 
the overhanging cliffs along the shore. With their 
little flotilla rushing headlong towards this well-laid 
trap, Yermak and his men learned of its existence in 
the nick of time. Some urged the leader to 
abandon the boats — built with so much toil and 
indispensable for the further success of their 
journey — and by proceeding across country to 

* Compare the story told by the Russian bylines with 
the similar adventures recounted in the chronicle of Gon- 
zalo Pizarro and Orellano in their voyage down the 
Amazon from Quito. 



YERMAK 55 

avoid the Tartar entrenchments. But the mas- 
ter-cunning of Yermak was equal to the occa- 
sion. By his orders short lengths of logs were 
cut and set up in the "long boats." These he 
draped with the tattered uniforms of his fol- 
lowers, while each scarecrow figure, surmounted 
with a shaggy Cossack calpack, was provided with 
a long sapling to simulate the Cossack pikes. Upon 
these dummy warriors, steering down upon them 
during the evening dusk, — each boat guided by 
one brave volunteer — the Tartar hordes loosed 
the fury of their bows and arrows. What must 
have been their dismay to find themselves in turn 
surprised and overwhelmed by a new army — the 
nearly naked forces of Yermak, who, creeping 
cautiously through the bushes attacked them 
fiercely from the flank and rear.* 

Soon after this event news was brought to Yer- 
mak that near Karatchin, a little town not far 
from the river Ob, a Tartar prince had gathered 
and hidden a "great treasure" which included, be- 
sides a store of native placer gold and precious 
stones, a part of the spoil captured by the soldiers 
of Genghis Khan. ( These were treasures, which the 
soldiers of the great Asiatic conqueror were carry- 
ing back with them to Tartary, when, as the chron- 
iclers state "they fell into the hands of the even 
more barbarous Voguls.") Yermak now har- 

* Fisher's "Histoire de Siberie," quoted by Lesur, op. 
cit. y vol. I, page 240. 



56 THE COSSACKS 

angued his followers concerning the merit to be 
obtained in recovering from the heathen these 
sacred vessels of gold and silver robbed from the 
churches and monasteries of Holy Russia. 

Decided by Yermak's persuasions to turn aside 
from their journey in order to undertake this pious 
adventure, the conquest proved an easy one for 
the Cossacks. But the added weight of their spoil 
nearly proved the undoing of these strange 
crusaders. Again, in reading the story of Yermak's 
exploits we are reminded of the conquistador es 
Pizarro and Alvarado in the bleak Andean high- 
lands, who although starving, clung to the golden 
spoils of the Peruvian Incas until they fell ex- 
hausted by the way. But the courage of the Cos- 
sack army was now strengthened by tangible 
proofs that this bleak wilderness actually concealed 
riches and booty — a tithe at least of that promised 
them by the Stroganovs. 

In their retreat the Tartars had diligently swept 
the entire countryside bare of provisions, but Yer- 
mak meets each new danger with another ruse : the 
solemn Fast of the Assumption being at hand, in- 
stead of the fourteen days of fasting prescribed by 
the Russian ritual, the resourceful Cossack leader 
declares a "fast of repentance" lasting forty days. 
Thus even the cruel hunger tearing at their vitals 
renewed — through their mystical faith — the 
strength of his little army. No less sustaining, 
perhaps, was the hope of yet richer spoils through 



YERMAK 57 

the sack of the Tartar cities which they knew lay 
just beyond. 

^ yfc tjpr ^r ^r 

Ever true to the unities of a great epic the crisis 
of our chronicle now approaches. The Kalmouck 
Prince Koutzum, of the imperial Tartar house of 
Timour Mangou Khan, at this time ruled over all 
the country between the river Ob and the Urals. 
To his exalted leadership even the rebellious 
Samoyeds, Voguls and Ostiaks now submitted in 
the face of the common danger. His woodland 
capital, protected by staked palisades and sur- 
rounded by a deep moat, was established at a place 
called I shir, which, as the ballad-chronicle states, 
"the Europeans called Sibir." The site of this 
forest metropolis (which may have given its name 
to the whole vast territory of Siberia) was not far 
from the present city of Tobolsk. Here was to 
occur the inevitable meeting of those whom the by- 
lines call the "lords of the future and of the past." 

The battle, long expected and apparently 
equally dreaded by both sides, was decided in 
favour of the Cossacks by a curious incident. A 
Russian cannon which during some foray with the 
Tartars had fallen into the hands of the forest 
tribesmen, had for generations been revered as 
a redoubtable fetish by the Voguls. Dragging this 
silent weapon with them to the battle field, the 
savages confidently turned it upon the attack of 
Yermak's little army — which was advancing upon 



58 THE COSSACKS 

them in a dense mass, the thunderbolts of the 
dreaded firearms playing like lightning along its 
front. But heedless of the incantations of the 
shamans the weapon in which the Voguls had 
placed their hopes remained obstinately silent. 
Their fatuous belief in its magical powers had led 
them to expect their ordinance to vomit destruction 
of its own accord upon their enemies ! Thus betrayed 
in their dearest hopes they turned and fled into their 
impenetrable forests — leaving their Tartar allies 
to bear the brunt of the Cossack charge. 

Terribly reduced in numbers, the Cossack forces 
probably consisted at this time of but little more 
than three hundred men, while aside from the in- 
dependable woodlanders, the Tartar-trained war- 
riors among the enemy were hardly more numerous. 
It would thus appear that the fate of the great 
Siberian empire hung on the fortunes of what 
was little more than a woodland skirmish! 

This decisive victory, won over the acknowledged 
chief of the Trans-Ural, and the valuable spoil 
gained in the encounter, encouraged Yermak to 
take a momentous step. He now decided to enter 
into negotiations with the distant court of Ivan the 
Terrible, and to secure a pardon from his sover- 
eign if possible for all past misdeeds. That 
Yermak (who had now advanced into an un- 
known country beyond the reach of the Tsar's 
justice, and occupied a position comparable to that 
of an independent prince) should thus trembling 



YERMAK 59 

seek to make his peace with the distant ruler in 
Moscow, is a sign of the great progress towards 
national unity which Russia had made under the 
stern rule of the Tsar Vasili and his successor. 
The spectacle of a Spanish hidalgo, all powerful 
in his colonial realm, ordering himself home to 
execution or to await the pleasure of his king, had 
already been noted on more than one occasion in 
the chronicles of Spanish-America. In Russia, 
however, such conduct is the mark of a new era. 

But even in making his doubtful peace with Ivan, 
Yermak was cautious. Either doubtful of his 
own reception, or anxious to maintain his recent 
conquests, he ordered his lieutenant, Koltso (who 
apparently now occupied a wholly subordinate po- 
sition) to undertake this task. A condemned 
criminal, with a price upon his head, thus became 
the messenger chosen to announce to Ivan that a 
vast new territory, which Cossack courage had con- 
quered, had been added to his empire. 

Here, again, the poetic version of the folksongs 
which have built up the popular legend of Yermak, 
and the records of history are wholly in accord. 
Ivan, after listening with interest to the tale of 
Yermak's adventures, readily forgave Koltso and 
his companions. Graciously accepting the "sixty 
sacks of precious furs" (which the Cossack artfully 
represented were but the first tribute of a con- 
quered nation) he promised to take Siberia under 
his "protection." In return, Koltso was charged to 



60 THE COSSACKS 

deliver to Yermak, besides the cloak which the 
Tsar wore upon his own august shoulders, a mag- 
nificent cuirass, destined to play a fatal role in the 
fast approaching climax of Yermak's legendary 
career. 

An even more acceptable favour was the prompt 
dispatch of five hundred troops from Ivan's new 
army who were sent to reinforce Yermak's de- 
pleted forces. These were placed under the tem- 
porary command of Prince Volkowski, a dvorianin, 
or courtier from the imperial court. As a further 
honour, "they were enrolled under the title of Cos- 
sacks, heretofore no very complimentary appella- 
tion in the eyes of constituted Russian authority." 
Moreover, the supreme command of the expedition 
appears to have remained in Yermak's hands in 
spite of the presence of the imperial representative. 

****** 

But the long epic of Yermak's adventures now 
nears its close. The winter following the safe re- 
turn from Moscow of Koltso accompanied by the 
Russian voevod, had been a disastrous one for the 
Cossacks. The supply of food upon which the ex- 
pedition depended for the cold season was ex- 
hausted long before spring, perhaps through the 
unexpected arrival of new reinforcements.* Much 
valuable provender had been burned or wasted in 
brutal unnecessary forays against the villages of 

* Lesur, page 257. 



YERMAK 61 

the forest tribesmen. Even the flight of the latter 
was fatal to their conquerors. The Voguls and 
Ostiaks possessed secrets and "charms" unknown 
to the Cossacks for capturing the winter game and 
for fishing during the season when the ice upon the 
rivers was too thick to cut through. Thus, 
through their own misdeeds famine and a great 
pestilence broke out among the Cossacks. Among 
the first to succumb was the dvorianin, the imperial 
courtier commanding Ivan's troops. 

Learning of these misfortunes the enemy now 
began to gather in formidable numbers and often 
boldly attacked the Cossack camp. Koltso, Yer- 
mak's fellow leader, was ambushed and slain dur- 
ing a foray in search of provisions. 

Following this series of disasters the welcome 
news was brought to Yermak that a caravan 
of Bokhariot merchants had arrived from Central 
Asia to trade with the new Russian outposts. This 
important mission, it was reported, had been halted 
through fear of meeting Koutzum's Tartar soldiers 
on the shores of the Vagai, an affluent of the 
Irtish. The Cossacks now decided to go boldly 
forth to protect the march of the caravan towards 
their camp. Too late they learned that they had 
been made the victims of a Tartar ruse. Yermak 
and his men, surrounded on all sides in a woodland 
ambush, took refuge on an island in the Irtish. 
Here, while the whole camp slept exhausted by the 
privations of their march, they were surprised by 



62 THE COSSACKS 

the enemy. Yermak, at the head of a trusted hand- 
ful of his followers, cut his way with little difficulty 
through the ranks of the enemy, who no longer 
dared to meet the hero face to face. Then, while 
making good his retreat, a false step threw the 
Cossack leader into the swift, deep current of the 
stream. The weight of his rich cuirass, the fatal 
gift of the Tsar, from which, with superstitious 
reverence, he never had separated himself, pinned 
him among the stones at the bottom of the river. 

The Apotheosis : Here the sober thread of prob- 
ability in the narrative of Yermak becomes almost 
lost in the bright legends which the bylines have 
woven about the hero's end. 

"The Tartars, recognizing the body of the chief- 
tain by the great golden eagle emblazoned on his 
armor, hung the corpse upon a framework of poles, 
and for six weeks made it a target for their archers. 
Yet even the carrion birds of prey, wheeling in the 
dark clouds about the hero's head, respected the 
august remains — a terrifying and prodigious 
proof to the Mussulmen that the dead leader was 
of no common clay! At night a cloud of baleful 
fire flickered about his head . . .," and this 
although no odor of putrefaction arose from the 
body!" The Tartars, persuaded by these omens, 
decided to bury the remains of Yermak with all 
the ceremony due to one of their own heroes. His 
grave, for many generations, became the resort of 
the Tartar magicians and of the shamans or 



YERMAK 63 

"Medicine-men" who were most honoured among 
the Voguls and Ostiaks . . . . " Thus bereft in turn 
of their three leaders, the Cossack expedition re- 
turned in disorder to the Russian outposts. For 
a time the conquests that Yermak had made with 
so much courage and persistence were abandoned. 
But his discoveries and example had not been in 
vain. The legend of the Cossack hero — an epic 
of empire — remained to stir the Cossack spirit to 
new adventures. It was largely through Cossack 
exploration and settlement that the vast land of 
Siberia was made known to Europe during the two 
succeeding centuries. 

In a recent work by Prof. Golder, the eminent 
American authority on the history of Alaska, the 
story of the discovery of and explorations in 
Eastern Siberia and the Western coast of America 
by Yermak's successors is told in fascinating detail. 

Upon his deathbed Peter the Great continually 
asked for news of a Cossack expedition which, un- 
der his orders, had been sent out to solve the mys- 
tery of a greatly desired "possible isthmus" which 
he thought must join the continents of Asia 
and the Americas. An extract from the directions 
personally addressed by the Tsar to the leaders of 
this quest shows what degree of pioneering work 
was expected, even in 1719, of Cossack enterprise. 

"You are to proceed to Kamchatka, as you have 
been ordered, and determine whether Asia and 



64 THE COSSACKS 

America are united, and go not only North and 
South, but East and West, putting in a chart all 
that you see." (See Golder's "Russian Expansion 
in the Pacific," p. 114, etc.) 

If the tossing waters of Behring Strait had not 
stopped the long ride of the Cossack pioneers, the 
western coast of North America might have been 
added to the Tsar's empire before Anglo- 
Saxon explorers could have gained a foothold 
there. A Cossack captain was the first white man 
to set foot upon the coast of Alaska — thus linking 
the history of our great Eastern neighbor Siberia 
with our own. And, while Cossack troopers were 
fighting to hold a great continent for Civiliza- 
tion — as against Bolshevik "f rightfulness" and 
misrule — in the Siberian capital at Omsk the re- 
puted saints-day of Yermak the Discoverer was 
solemnly recalled by a parade and review of the 
armies of Free Russia before his statue at the door 
of the great Cathedral. 



CHAPTER IV 

BOGDAN HMELNICKY; A COSSACK 
NATIONAL HERO 

THE magic call of free land had slowly re- 
peopled the devastated steppes of the Ukraine 
following the withdrawal of the Tartar invasion. 
Little did the first hardy Cossack pioneers, who 
built their homesteads in this "smiling wilderness" 
know or care that by this act they subjected them- 
selves to the feudal claims of former Polish and 
Lithuanian overlords. Too feeble to make good 
their pretensions against the Tartars, these nobles 
now sought to exercise their "rights" over the new- 
comers. But until the middle of the seventeenth 
century some acknowledged leader had been lack- 
ing among the Cossack chieftains. Until this time 
the very name of Cossack had indicated a "master- 
less" man, differentiating their race from the 
Russian peasant class who had long since bartered 
liberty in exchange for order. In Bogdan Hmel- 
nicky the scattered settlements and clans of the 
steppes found a hero through whose genius their 
warlike race was to receive for a brief period the 
impulse of nationality. 

The industry and courage of the Cossacks had 

65 



66 THE COSSACKS 

brought prosperity if not peace to the deserted 
steppes. The Polish aristocrats of the border, 
panye and starostsi, were now for the first time 
safe behind the bulwark of their settlements, and 
already had begun to look with disfavour on their 
democratic protectors. Rightly enough, they con- 
sidered that the "Free People" were dangerous 
neighbors for their own serfs, meek, priest-ridden 
folk exploited alike by Jew and Jesuit. 

In our own day when the problems of a "Free 
Poland" unite the sympathies of the victorious 
democracies, it is difficult to realize the meaning 
that "Polish Freedom" must have conveyed to the 
peasant and Cossack population of the Ukraine 
two centuries ago. The persistent loyalty with 
which the Polish people have clung to their faith 
and their nationality has won the admiration of the 
whole civilized world. Yet the most superficial 
study of Polish national history reveals the reason 
for many of their past misfortunes. 

The only recognized citizens of the old "re- 
public" of Poland were the panye, or nobles, — a 
class so jealous of its arrogant equality that the 
negative vote of a single gentleman could set at 
naught the deliberations of the entire nobiliary 
body gathered in council. Their parliaments were 
usually held in the open fields near Cracow or 
Warsaw, often on horseback. These were attended 
by all of aristocratic lineage who chose to be 
present, either to vote or to impose their opinions 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 67 

by their shouts or the clash of their weapons. The 
great Polish nobles often attended these as- 
semblies accompanied by private armies of horse, 
foot and artillery, recruited from among their serfs 
and retainers. Naturally, few of these armed as- 
sizes passed off without conflict and the spilling of 
much azure blood. 

No Polish pan might engage in trade. To buy 
and sell was considered degrading and, therefore, 
forbidden their class. Yet these strange "repub- 
lican" aristocrats might become the humble ser- 
vants of a fellow pan without losing their rights in 
the national assembly. Only the nobles were per- 
mitted to own land, and too often the exploitation 
of their peasants was left in the hands of Jew or 
German "factors" or overseers. The only occupa- 
tion of the masters of the soil lay in the more con- 
genial employments of law-making — and law- 
breaking. In the tumultuous assemblies of the no- 
biliary Diet only one principle seems to have met 
with general agreement — the God-given right of 
the pan to exploit his serfs as natural "property." 
Among the free peasants and Cossacks of the 
Ukraine it was commonly reported that the Polish 
priests taught their peasant parishioners to answer 
a question of the catechism beginning "Why has 
God created you?" by the humble response: "To 
give our service to our noble lords." 

The civilization of Poland was Catholic and 
Roman: the civilization of the border provinces 



68 THE COSSACKS 

looked towards the East and remembered By- 
zance. These differences have persisted to the 
present time, but in the early seventeenth century, 
when Catholic Poland was a powerful state and 
Russia still in the making, religious oppression 
sowed the seed of differences which have not yet 
died away. The people of the Orthodox Ukraine 
— peasants and Cossacks alike — could only look 
to a distant Tsar for redress when the armed emis- 
saries of the oppressing Polish Church rode among 
them demanding tithes and taxes. Or else — as the 
wise King Sigismond of Poland is reported to have 
himself advised them — they might "trust to their 
own Cossack swords." ^ 

The complete reunion of Poland and Lithuania^* ) 
decreed at Lublin in 1569 had resulted in a promise 
to the Greek Orthodox population of the border 
lands that the freedom of their religion would be 
respected. But the militant Catholic order of the 
Society of Jesus was firmly entrenched at Warsaw. 
To the influence of these learned and courtly 
prelates the Polish aristocracy owed their aston- 
ishing progress in the arts of civilization and their, 
perhaps too faithful, conformity to the more super- 
ficial standards of western Europe. The not un- 
natural ambition of the Jesuits — and of the Polish 
nobles whose political policy as well as their 
conscience was dominated by these spiritual di- 
rectors, — lay in bringing about the submission of 
the Orthodox provinces of the Polish frontier to the 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 69 

rule of the Catholic church. By one of those able 
compromises which formed the basis of Jesuit 
diplomacy, they conceived the idea of endowing 
these border races with a separate "Uniate" church. 
This allowed the Orthodox believers to retain some 
features of the old ritual, to which they clung so 
persistently, while yielding obedience to the Pope 
at Rome. But this first crafty step towards a more 
irrevocable union was viewed with not unnatural 
suspicion from the beginning. In 1595 all but 
thirty-seven of the bishops whose sees lay in the 
Orthodox provinces had succumbed to the power- 
ful influence of the Jesuits. Not so, however, their 
parishioners, the sturdy Ukrainian peasantry and 
the Cossack polki. To these latter Orthodoxy 
meant personal liberty and the dignity of freemen, 
while Catholicism preached obedience and blind 
submission. 

The lot of the Orthodox clergy and peasants of 
the Ukraine, separated by a gulf of fanaticism from 
their feudal Polish lords, was voiced in Morris 
Drecninski's protest to the King in the Polish 
Diet:* 

"When your Majesty goes to war against the 
Turk who furnishes the greater part of your army? 
Russians practicing the Orthodox faith! How, 
then, can we be asked to sacrifice our lives abroad 
when at home there is no peace? Our miseries, the 
miseries of the Russian subjects of Poland, are 

* Rambaud, op cit, p. 314. 



70 THE COSSACKS 

patent to everyone. In the great cities seals close 
the doors of our churches and their holy treasuries 
are despoiled. In our monasteries the monks are 
driven forth and cattle stabled in their place. Our 
children are without baptism and their corpses are 
thrown out from the town like the bodies of dead 
animals. Men and women must live together with- 
out God's benediction given by a priest. Death is 
without confession or sacrament. Is not this an 
offence against God and will not God avenge us?" 

Another grievance, even more galling to the 
Orthodox frontiersmen, was found in the behaviour 
of the Jew and German "intendants" who usually 
acted as intermediaries between the Polish lords of 
the manor and the long-suffering population of 
their estates. These "unbelievers" were often 
given "control of the rights of hunting and fishing, 
the roads and wine shops" — even access to the 
Orthodox churches was to be obtained from them 
only by paying a fee. 

The bitterest irony of the situation we have 
described lay in the fact that these burdens were 
laid by the aristocracy, not as in the rest of Europe, 
upon a grovelling population of serfs to whom their 
lords at least afforded protection, but upon a border 
nation of alien faith and blood who, following the 
policy of the Polish kings, possessed a system of 
martial preparedness and, indeed, were the princi- 
pal protectors of the Polish frontiers. 

The rampart against the Turks and Tartars, 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 71 

formed by the Cossack settlements, had by this 
time become fully organized. They formed no less 
than twenty regular Cossack polki or regiments, 
each under its own colonel, or polkovnik. The 
whole of this well disciplined army obeyed the com- 
mands of a single military chief called the "Hetman 
of the Ukraine," who received his appointment 
from the King of Poland. In all his decisions this 
officer was guided by the advice of a starshina or 
council of the Cossack elders. 

Besides the above troops, recruited from among 
the inhabitants of the Cossack settlements and the 
"slovods" or armed villages nearer the Tartar fron- 
tier, the warlike brotherhood of the Zaporogian 
Cossacks had now grown into a powerful military 
organization. Their stronghold — the sitch — 
formed a permanent camp or rendezvous beyond 
the rapids of the Dnieper. These warriors — fa- 
mous in all Europe — represented the perfection, 
or rather the extreme, of devotion to the principles 
of free Cossack life. Their celebrated infantry 
were the only troops capable of withstanding the 
shock of Polish cavalry, the heavily armed hou- 
zars or hussars of noble birth, and the less showy, 
but no less invincible dragoons. 

In many places along the border the Cossacks 
had old-established settlements scattered among the 
serf -tilled lands belonging to the Polish and Lithu- 
anian nobles. Often these homesteads, which the 
Cossacks had reclaimed from the steppes, were 



72 THE COSSACKS 

tenaciously claimed through some shadowy feudal 
right by absentee Polish landlords. By the latter, 
the Free Cossacks and their institutions were of 
course considered a dangerous example to the doc- 
ile Polish peasantry. 

In order to discourage the growth of a class of 
Cossack proprietors, even the tolerant Polish king, 
Stephen Bathory, had tried to establish a register 
of "Free Cossacks" whose numbers were not to 
exceed six thousand. The surplus of the Cos- 
sacks — those not needed for purposes of border 
defense — were often forced to labor on the land of 
some feudal lord. It was concerning the coveted 
right of inscription upon this list of free men and 
upon grounds of religious oppression that the prin- 
cipal difference now arose which was to separate 
the Cossack nation from their allegiance to the 
kings of Poland. Long patient under wrongs, they 
felt the power to redress: the Cossacks of the 
Ukraine only awaited a hero to lead them in a war 
of rightful assertion and protest. 

Bogdan Hmelnicky had been chosen by the 
Swedish King of Poland, Vladislas (or Valdemar) 
Vasa, as Hetman of the Cossacks of the Ukraine, 
on account of his record as a soldier, and because 
judged by the standards of his time, he possessed 
"no small share of learning" — the ability both to 
read and write. Such talents were almost a mark 
of erudition among the Cossacks of the seventeenth 
century. In his youth a brilliant defense of the 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 73 

fortress of Zolkiev against the Crimean Tartars 
had made his reputation known even in Europe, 
where the gazettes were always much concerned 
with Polish affairs.* 

The incident which changed Bogdan from a 
conscientious official of the Polish crown and 
made him the implacable enemy of his former pa- 
trons is recorded in different ways by contemporary 
historians, — usually according to their race or 
prejudices. All are agreed that he was the victim 
of a cruel wrong, and even a Polish writer of his 
time finds his principal fault to have been that "he 
revenged himself upon the state for a private 
iniquity."** 

Bogdan was a "free-holder" or non-noble pro- 
prietor of a small farm and flour mill at a place 

* If we are to accept the version set forth in Sien- 
kiewicz's "Heroic Romance" — "Fire and Sword," Bog- 
dan's reputation would not be much better than that of a 
brutal adventurer who, by inciting the frontier popula- 
tions to revolt, caused untold misery throughout the Po- 
lish "Republic," and among his own countrymen. Fortu- 
nately for Bogdan's good name, the fine scorn of the 
gifted Polish writer for the "base-born" Cossack and his 
glorification of the perjured "Yarema" (Prince Jeremy 
Visnowiecki), are not shared by historical authorities. 
The truth is probably to be found somewhere between the 
work of fiction referred to and the account found in Sal- 
vandy's Histoire de Jean Sobieski." 

** See note, Vol. L, page 189, Salvandy's Histoire de 
Jean SobiesJci. 



74 THE COSSACKS 

called Czehrin near the shores of the Dnieper. His 
little property lay in a country where for leagues 
around the land was owned, or rather claimed, by 
the great Polish family of Konietspolski. The in- 
tendant of these feudal lords casting a covetous eye 
on the Naboth's vineyard belonging to the Cossack 
hetman, summoned him before a tribunal pre- 
sided over by their common master, Alexander 
Konietspolski. Here, after due process of feudal 
law, Bogdan heard himself summarily dispossessed. 
To protest against such a sentence was unheard-of 
insolence. Yet the hetman (although he knew that 
Cossack "rights" stood little chance of prevailing 
against a Polish magnate who himself interpreted 
the laws) ventured to take this step — trusting in 
his record of past services to the "republic." As 
an all-sufficient answer, the veteran soldier was 
sentenced to serve a term in the jail of the Koni- 
etspolski. 

Fortunately for the Cossack nation, Bogdan was 
able to make his escape, and we soon find him an 
honoured guest in that citadel of personal liberty, 
the impenetrable sitch of the Zaporogians. Among 
the island fortresses defended by this famous 
brotherhood, even the armed retainers of Koniets- 
polski dared not pursue him. Meanwhile, the in- 
tendant, Czaplinski, in order to revenge himself in 
true seignorial fashion, visited Bogdan's homestead 
at the head of his retainers. The crime that ensued 
is recounted in many ways. The poetical necessities 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 75 

of the case may have caused the Cossack ballad- 
historians to rouse their countrymen by painting 
the intendant's conduct in its blackest colours, 
Czaplinski, besides depriving the hetman of his 
property sought, in his absence, "to place upon the 
honour of his victim's family an unspeakable out- 
rage." 

The whole incident is but one in a long story of 
oppression, yet it was the spark necessary to fire 
the powder magazine of Cossack indignation and 
to rouse their fierce resistance to wrongs they had 
too long patiently endured. The war which now 
began between the nobles of the Polish "republic" 
on the one hand and the Free Cossacks and Ukrai- 
nian peasants on the other was to end only after 
the fairest provinces of the border land had again 
and again been devastated with "fire and sword." 

It was at the head of nearly 100,000 Cossack 
soldiers and a horde of Tartars whom the promised 
plunder of the Polish castles had enlisted on the 
side of their bitterest enemies, that the hetman re- 
turned to demand an accounting from the Koniet- 
polski. As he advanced, new volunteers flocked to 
his standards: Cossacks, peasants, and gentle- 
men of the Ukraine, whom religious persecution 
had driven from their estates. In the space of a 
few weeks he found himself the leader of an army 
of irregular troops estimated at 300,000 men — a 
whole people in arms. From now on until his death 
Bogdan was an uncrowned king — the head of a 



76 THE COSSACKS 

Cossack nation for the first time united. As a sym- 
bol or scepter of authority he carried in his hand a 
reed from the shores of the River Dneiper. 

Thinking to crush without difficulty this motley 
gathering (for in spite of the stiffening battalions 
of Zaporogian frontiersmen the Cossack polki were 
scarcely a match for the regular troops maintained 
by the Polish republic) a brilliant company of 
nobles set forth from Warsaw "as to the chase." 
Their leader was a brave young general — 
Stephen Pototski. At Zoltivody — the Yellow 
Waters — this army of Polish nobles thought to 
ride roughshod over the peasant bands, but their 
own defeat was complete and crushing. 

Vladislas, the King of Poland — the wise ruler 
of a distracted nobility — received on his deathbed 
a message from Bogdan. Although the Cossack 
chieftain was now victorious, his letter was a sub- 
missive proposal (dated June 2, 1648) suggesting, 
not dictating, the terms of an honourable peace. 
The principal privilege asked for was an assurance 
that the "ancient rights" of the Cossacks, notably 
the famous "Register of Freemen," should be re- 
stored, and that the right of free worship be 
allowed to those of the Greek-Orthodox faith. Per- 
haps the very mildness of the tone of Bogdan's 
communication deceived Prince Jeremy Visno- 
wiecki, the new chief of the Polish armies. Prince 
Jeremy was the embodiment of Jesuitical intol- 
erance and well-born arrogance, but to these de- 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 77 

fects he joined one doubtful virtue — stupid and 
uncalculating courage. Strengthened by a few 
minor successes among his own revolted villages, 
he now thought only of punishing the offenders. 
"Strike so that they may feel!!" he had ordered his 
judges and executioners. The story of his "fright- 
fulness" brought to the Cossack camp new and 
more desperate levies of volunteers. 

No reply had even been vouchsafed by the proud 
nobility to Bogdan's proposal of peace. Indeed 
none was awaited: on foreign agent and Jesuit 
priest — the twin scourges of the long-suffering 
Orthodox peasants of the Ukraine — fell the 
weight of Cossack vengeance. The stories of the 
wrongs of these "martyrs" have generally survived 
the grievances they provoked. It is but fair, how- 
ever, to search for some underlying motive of 
justice behind the Cossack brutalities which have 
been so eloquently exploited. In spite of the 
naturally prejudiced accounts of Polish historians, 
the student of the present day will find something 
besides blind ferocity in the acts of this "coalition 
of Mussulmen, Socinians and Greeks," who in 
their furious crusade overthrew churches, burned 
monasteries, "granting their lives to monks and 
nuns only to enjoy the spectacle of their forced 
nuptials, celebrated in the shadow of the sword." * 

Fleeing before the advancing Cossack army, a 
horde of fugitives: old men, women and children, 

* Salvandy op. cit. Vol. I, page 191. 



78 THE COSSACKS 

the inhabitants of iiic border villages, brought to 
the castles and cities of Poland the first news of 
these unexpected, unbelievable disasters to her 
armies. Thus at a time when Western Europe was 
celebrating the end of thirty years of continual 
bloodshed by signing the treaty of Westphalia, the 
border world of the Slav nation took up the burden 
of war. 

After the death of the wise Vladislas, a great 
Plenary Diet of the nobles of Poland was held on 
the field of Volna. While the excitable Panye 
screamed recriminations at each other's heads — 
trying in disorderly conclave to elect a new king 
for their distracted nation — Jeremy Visnowiecki 
with an army of 140,000 men, nobles of Poland 
with their serfs and mercenaries, tried to stem the 
tide of invasion at Plavace. But at the approach 
of the Cossacks and their allies this forlorn hope, 
gathered from all her wide lands to meet Poland's 
extremity, melted away in most ungentlemanly 
panic before the waving of Bogdan's reed — the 
peasant standard. 

Bogdan's wise policy now spared the farmsteads 
and the Roman Catholic churches dear to the Polish 
peasants. But upon the castles of the nobility, 
stored with treasures of art which excited the admir- 
ation of every European traveller who had visited 
these distant lands, the advancing host wreaked its 
anger. Bogdan no longer desired a mere Cossack 
vengeance. He was now the leader of a popular 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 79 

movement or jacquerie which sought to secure the 
same privilege for the peasants of Poland that his 
victories promised for the Cossack inhabitants of 
the Ukraine. While the only electors of the "re- 
public" — the privileged nobles — still deliberated 
at Volna over the choice of a king, Bogdan had 
become the undisputed ruler of the Ukraine. By 
establishing popular rule over an ever increasing 
expanse of Polish territory, he seemed about to 
solve the problem of who should be king, in his own 
way. 

In the castle at Zamosc, one of the last of the 
"impregnable" fortresses of the Polish borders, 
the armies of Bogdan were besieging a dis- 
tinguished company including the heads of nearly 
all the greatest feudal families of the western prov- 
inces. Here, with their servants and treasures, were 
gathered the refugees of Plavace, the lords and 
ladies of the great families of Viesnowiecki, Za- 
moyski, Sobieski, besides others of lesser note. To 
join in the defense of this last stronghold of his 
caste, John Sobieski, the future hero of all Chris- 
tian Europe, had passed during the night through 
the triple lines of the Cossack armies. 

Under this brilliant young chieftain the besieged 
forces still held out, when after five weeks of armed 
debate the choice of the electors of Poland fell at 
last upon the candidate least obnoxious to the ma- 
jority of the electors. The honour was thrust upon 
an unwilling prelate, the Cardinal John Cazimir, 



80 THE COSSACKS 

a brother of the late king. This solution appeared 
preferable to a choice of the Russian Tsar Alexis, 
whose ambitious plans would have joined Poland 
and Russia in a "personal union." 

Cardinal John Cazimir (who was so strangely 
to end his days in exile as Abbot of the Con- 
vent of St. Germain des Pres in Paris) has been 
described as "too passionate for the Church, too 
feeble for the throne and, above all, too honest and 
straightforward for his time and country." His 
first royal act showed the latter traits. Refusing to 
listen to the partisans of Prince Jeremy — who, in 
spite of the thorough beating the Polish nobles had 
received, continued to threaten the rebellious Cos- 
sacks with all manner of legal punishments sol- 
emnly voted in high conclave of the Diet — he 
offered to treat with Bogdan's armies on the basis 
of their old guarantees. 

Over his royal signature, he wrote to their leader, 
proposing almost in the terms used between sov- 
ereign and sovereign, that the past be forgotten. 
At the same time he promised to revive and confirm 
the ancient privileges of the Cossacks which had 
been so treacherously violated by the Jeremites. 
The royal messenger was instructed to deliver at 
the same time to Bogdan, if he were prepared to 
accept them, the horse-tail standard and other re- 
galia formerly conferred on every Cossack hetman 
by the kings of Poland. Although the fortunes of 
war had raised the man thus honoured above the 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 81 

power of the Polish throne, Bogdan placed his lips 
respectfully upon the King's signature. As a 
proof of immediate obedience, he ordered that the 
final assault about to be delivered upon the castle 
of Zamosc should be abandoned. Chivalrously 
trusting to the royal word, the army of Cossacks 
and peasants was removed some ten miles from 
the walls of this last battered stronghold of Polish 
nobility. But the generosity of the Cossack chief- 
tain and the hopes of the popular party were once 
more to be deceived. By breaking the royal 
promises, Prince Jeremy and a band of con- 
federated "nobles" were able to throw themselves 
upon the undefended camp of the Cossacks, win- 
ning a treacherous but temporary advantage. The 
unfortunate Cazimir, although a stranger to the 
acts of Jeremy and protesting against such viola- 
tion of his agreement, was none the less forced to 
march to the assistance of the Polish forces. 

Still wearing the rich garments they had donned 
in honour of the Cardinal's marriage with his 
brother's widow, the Polish court set forth to 
attack the indefatigable Bogdan. But by the time 
they had reached the frontier, this amazing wedding 
cortege (whose warlike pomp astonished even 
the accompanying envoys from the great courts of 
Europe) learned of a second well-deserved defeat 
of the perjured "Jeremites." Their own peril now 
became imminent. At Zborovo the embroidered 
tents and silken pavilions of the royal army were 



82 THE COSSACKS 

soon surrounded and beset by the Cossack and 
peasant troops. Only the sudden defection of their 
undependable ally, the Khan of Crimea, saved 
Cazimir and his bride. The Khan had been won 
over to the Polish side by the promised renewal 
of the degrading Polish tribute paid his ancestors. 
In view of this temporary respite the angry Bog- 
dan once more consented to negotiate. 

The old terms of the Cossack demands were mag- 
nanimously renewed. The popular party chiefly 
insisted upon the expulsion of both Jews and Jes- 
uits from the Orthodox provinces. The rights of 
the metropolitan of Kiev to a seat in the Senate of 
Warsaw and the opening of the Cossack registers 
to enroll 40,000 Cossacks — who were thus pro- 
tected from the claims and exploitation of the Po- 
lish landholders — was also secured. In a final 
clause Bogdan was recognized by the King of Po- 
land as his deputy and hetman over all the prov- 
inces of Little Russia, thus securing the practical 
autonomy of the Ukraine provinces. 

After the peace of Zborovo, Bogdan had written 
to the Polish king as follows : — "Through his own 
example, my father taught me loyalty in my cradle 
by dying for the republic. If I have been forced to 
spill noble blood, whose is the fault? Let your 
Majesty inquire of the nobles who surround him! 
I am ready, Sire, to satisfy all your Majesty's de- 
sires and, for my own part, no false pride shall in- 
terfere. I only ask one thing: the certainty of 
living in peace under Your Majesty's laws." 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 83 

The unfortunate John Cazimir, Bodgan recog- 
nized as a statesman in whose word he could trust. 
But the Polish nobility of that day could not feel 
their "honour" involved in keeping faith with such 
low-born enemies. The years that followed, — 
marking alas ! but a truce in the popular strife, — 
were fatal chapters in the national story of Poland. 
It is impossible to find any true record of this time. 
The only historical sources are so filled with the 
recriminations and exaggerations of their authors 
as to be almost useless to the student. 

Over the whole Ukraine hangs a red mist, the 
firelit smoke rising from hamlet and chateau. 
Hidden by this pall the forms of the contestants 
are but dimly seen: peasant mobs, wild Cossack 
troops, and the brilliantly armed retainers of the 
party e of the Polish "republic." Above the charge 
and shock of the contending armies rise the woeful 
cries of thousands of innocent victims sacrificed by 
this horrible civil carnage. Even the heroic Bog- 
dan felt the call of ambition and personal spite. 
Turning from his pursuit of the national enemy, 
the hetman of the Ukraine undertook a campaign 
against Moldavia in order to force the volovoda of 
that province to bestow the hand of his daughter, 
Rosanda (promised to his personal foe, Jeremy 
Viesnowiecki), on his own son, Timothy Hmel- 
nicky. 

Under the liberal-minded Sultan Mahomed IV 
(1650) Constantinople had become a refuge for 



84 THE COSSACKS 

all the religious exiles of Europe, fleeing from the 
persecution of their fellow Christians. The 
Orthodox patriarch in the Turkish capital induced 
Bogdan to accept from the Sultan the high title 
of "Prince of the Ukraine." A little later, the same 
influences found no difficulty in launching the 
Cossacks upon a renewed crusade against the 
Catholics and Jesuitized Uniates of the border 
provinces. 

But the Poles had profited by the respite given 
them during Bogdan' s southern campaigns to 
strengthen their armies with troops of German mer- 
cenaries, whose trade of war had languished in 
Eastern Europe since the Peace of Westphalia. 
Bogdan and his Cossacks, encamped near Zboraz, 
ravaging at their leisure the lands of the Viesno- 
wiecki, found himself attacked by these formidable 
reinforcements. Although the Cossacks defended 
themselves courageously behind their famous "ta- 
bors" — ramparts formed by ox-carts — the for- 
tunes of the day remained with the professional 
soldiery of Tilly and Wallenstein. Moreover, the 
promised Turkish reinforcements failed to arrive 
in aid of Bogdan at the critical moment. 

After the temporary advantages thus gained by 
the party of the nobles the famous Cossack Register 
was reduced to 20,000. But rather than return to 
the fields of their Polish oppressors, great numbers 
of Cossacks emigrated to join their brethren on 
Russian territory. In the stanitzi on the 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 85 

shores of the Don and Volga, they were more free 
to exercise their national customs at the same time 
the Tsar's armies were strengthened by recruits 
ever ready for a new attack upon the Polish 
frontier. Bogdan had, moreover, fully realized that 
the pride of the Polish nobles could learn nothing 
by experience. Their determination to exercise 
ruthlessly their "rights'' over the peasants who had 
entrusted their fortunes to the Cossack alliance was 
shown by every new act of the Diet. With a nation 
controlled only by class feeling, no compromise 
can be made, no agreements held. Already their 
fellows were deserting the Cossack settlements in 
alarming numbers to place themselves under the 
protection of the Tsar on Russian territory. The 
time had come for Bogdan and the Cossacks of the 
Dnieper to make their choice. 

About this time an ambassador of the Tsar, 
Prince Buturline, visited the Cossack camp, and 
Bogdan assembled the chiefs of the Cossack nation 
to consult with this official. At Perieslav, their 
assembly was asked to decide the future of the 
Ukraine nation. The hetman began his speech as 
follows : — 

"My lord colonels, scribes and captains : and you, 
noble army of the Zaporogians: All of you, chris- 
tians of the Orthodox faith, are witnesses that we 
can no longer live, except under the protection of 
a prince. We have a choice of four masters: The 
Sultan of Turkey, the King of Poland, the Khan 
of the Crimea, or the Tsar." 



86 THE COSSACKS 

Continuing his long harangue, he pointed out 
many reasons (notably their common religion) 
that caused him to give his own vote in favor of a 
Russian alliance. A loud shout of assent greeted 
his words. It was decided to send a deputation 
without delay to the Tsar Alexis, beseeching him 
to take his "children of Little Russia" under his 
protection. In an assembly of the Russian States 
General summoned by Alexis, the strong argument 
was advanced that unless the offers of Bogdan were 
accepted, the whole Cossack nation might be forced 
to place itself under the protection of Turkey or 
the "Crim Tartars." Reasons of policy decided 
the Russians to incorporate these turbulent new 
citizens within the empire, but it is to be noted that 
no other "conquest" of the Ukraine ever took place. 

Meanwhile, Timothy Hmelnicky had once more 
set out to seek his fatal bride, Rosanda. Attacked 
by the Poles on the banks of the river Bug, he de- 
feated them with great slaughter. While the inter- 
rupted nuptials of Bogdan's son and heir with 
Jeremy's betrothed were celebrated, the Polish 
Diet in the extremity of its despair begged for 
military aid from the Diet of the empire at 
Ratisbon. 

At the present time, the reasons offered as an 
excuse for such an appeal are worthy of note: 
"Fighting always in the name of liberty this slogan 
strengthens the Cossack's cause. If left to them- 
selves the Cossacks may even find partisans in 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 87 

Silesia ready to help them. For these reasons the 
Emperor's help is implored." Failing to move the 
Emperor, the Diet next addressed itself to the 
Khan of the Crimea, although one of their prin- 
cipal grievances against Bogdan had been the Cos- 
sack alliance with the Tartars. This ferocious ally, 
whose help they could only hope to secure on con- 
dition that two of their Polish provinces be given 
to his troops for pillage, also refused his support.* 

Although distrusting the Polish nobles, with 
whom he was but nominally at peace, and in spite 
of the successes of the Cossack party, the Tsar 
Alexis still hesitated in his decision. Bogdan, 
whose son Timothy had fallen in a border skirmish, 
now renewed his demands that the Russians should 
accept the Cossack alliance. According to Sal- 
vandy the final argument which decided the Tsar 
to make war with Poland was the victory of a bull 
named "Moscovy" over another named "Poland," 
during one of those trials by "ordeal" in which the 
credulity of that day still saw the judgment of a 
higher power. The mathematical academy of 
Warsaw (a fact authenticated by a despatch of 
the Emperor's envoy) was at the same time en- 
gaged in a profound astrological calculation, whose 
results bore out the judgment of Alexis' bulls, but 
in a sense, of course, favourable to their own 
country. 

The final excuse for opening hostilities by a 

* See Salvandy, op. cit.> Vol. I, page 2. 



88 THE COSSACKS 

Russian advance against the Polish provinces was 
found in the studied arrogance of the Polish dip- 
lomats, who, in spite of the continued remon- 
strances of Alexis' envoys, insisted upon address- 
ing the Tsar with one "etc" less than the majesty 
of his imperial titles required. 

The Moscovite armies quickly overran Lithu- 
ania, capturing in succession Vilna, Grodno and 
Kovno, long centres of contention between the 
armies of Russia and Poland. Meanwhile Bogdan 
and his Cossacks advanced upon the border prov- 
inces of the south, capturing the proud city of Lem- 
berg, whose burghers enjoyed the rights of Polish 
nobility. Few writers of the time seem to have 
realized that the whole political balance of Eastern 
Europe was about to change. A new "Great Em- 
pire" whose weight in the future councils of Europe 
was to become preponderant, had come into ex- 
istence. The defection of the Cossacks from their 
Polish alliance turned the scales of the balanced 
forces at the command of the two great Slav states 
in favour of Russia. Henceforth Poland was to 
remain on the defensive in all her struggles with 
her mighty neighbour. 

By a strange turn of events, now briefly to be de- 
scribed in their relation to the Cossack cause, the 
appearance of a third enemy in the field alone saved 
the Polish state. Charles X of Sweden, alarmed by 
the rapid success of the Russians in Lithuania, 
tried to secure a share of the spoil for Sweden. 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 89 

After conquering — with the help of Polish mal- 
contents — the great cities of Posen, Warsaw and 
Cracow, he allowed himself to be elected King of 
Poland by the distracted Diet. With little love for 
the "republic' ' of which he was now the titular head, 
he turned his armies and ambitions against the Tsar 
in her defense. The Polish nation, trampled un- 
derfoot by this double conquest, could henceforth 
only profit by the quarrels of its destroyers over 
their spoils, to preserve for more than a century a 
precarious independence. 

In judging of Bogdan's conduct in connection 
with the complicated situation which now arose, it 
must be remembered that the freedom and privi- 
leges of the Cossack nation in the Ukraine had been 
the primary object of his momentous revolt against 
Poland. He had indeed appeared to abandon this 
ambition for independence by placing the Cossack 
nation under the rule of the Tsar Alexis. Although 
the Assembly of Perieslav and the decisions taken 
under Bogdan's influence became the most signifi- 
cant and lasting event of his career, the situation 
created by the invasion of the Swedes caused him 
to regret this alliance with Russia. Once more the 
Cossacks dreamed of a third great Slav state, which 
their valor might establish in the "land of Bus." 
In the later plans of Bogdan we may perhaps find 
the first signs of the Butheno-Slav or Ukrainian 
movement of the present day. 

In January 1657, the Voievoda of Transylvania, 



90 THE COSSACKS 

George Rakovsky, invaded the distracted Polish 
"republic" as the ally of Charles of Sweden. A 
dismemberment of Poland now threatened, which 
might have anticipated the events which occurred 
more than a century later. Bogdan and his Cos- 
sacks saw in the onslaughts of this newcomer an 
opportunity to recover the liberties which had been 
lost or restricted by their agreements with the Tsar. 
Although joining their forces to the new enemy of 
their Polish oppressors, the Cossacks found them- 
selves allied to an avowed enemy of Russia. The 
maritime nations of Europe now began to take part 
in these complicated struggles of the Northern 
Powers. The jealous intervention of Sweden's old 
enemies, the rival sea-powers of Denmark and Hol- 
land, forced Charles to retire from Poland in such 
haste that in his retreat, he had not even time to 
notify his allies. Rakovsky escaped the anger of 
the Poles through a series of humiliating conces- 
sions, only to fall into the hands of the Tartars 
while retreating homewards. Thus, in the short 
space of six weeks, through a series of unforeseen 
events .and combinations which their own courage 
did little to bring about, the Polish nobles found 
their territory rid of the devastating presence of 
three armies. 

At this embarrassing juncture in the affairs of 
the Cossacks — hated by the Poles and separated 
from their Russian allies — there disappeared from 
the scene a man, who, in the turmoil of these events 



BOGDAN : A COSSACK NATIONAL HERO 91 

had played so great and singular a part. "Able, 
both as a statesman and a warrior, accorded a 
kingly state by all the Great Powers, Bogdan con- 
tinued until the end of his career to lead the life of 
a peasant or a common soldier. In the same room 
that he shared with his wife and children he re- 
ceived embassies from the greatest crowned 
heads of Europe. The sudden apoplectic stroke 
which carried off the veteran chief of the Cossacks 
removed a factor which, for ten years, had played 
a role in Eastern Europe which has been compared 
to that of Cromwell in the West. Yet today Bog- 
dan's name is all but forgotten in history.* 

While readers of the English race may consider 
exaggerated a parallel between the Cossack Bog- 
dan and the great Protector, we must take into ac- 
count in our judgment of these men and their am- 
bitions, the widely different circumstances which 
confronted them. Both tried, in the name of lib- 
erty, to build into free states nations just emerging 
from the tyranny of feudal institutions. Both 
sought to maintain independent of the autocratic 
governments that surrounded them, democracies 
anticipating those of our own day. 

But, by "freedom" it is to be feared the Cossack 
comrades of Bogdan understood little except 
license. During the siege of Zamosc at the most 
fatal moment of their national fortunes, even the 
prestige of Bogdan's leadership could not prevent 

* Salvandy. 



92 THE COSSACKS 

large numbers of his followers from deserting the 
Cossack camp in order to place in safety the rich 
spoils of the chateaux pillaged by the way. The 
Cossack troopers that remained, "astonished to find 
themselves eating their coarse rations from silver 
plates, drinking from golden goblets and sleeping 
on couches covered with the richest furs, passed 
their days and nights in orgies and masquerades. 
Simple peasants, dressed in the stolen trappings of 
noble bishops and palatines wasted the stern op- 
portunities their courage had won." 

With the death of Bogdan the free Cossack state 
he had founded in the Ukraine fell to pieces almost 
in a night — nor were his great projects revived 
until recent times. 



CHAPTER V 

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE UKRAINE 

BOGDAN left to his surviving son a splendid 
heritage — the duty of carrying out great 
projects but half realized. Soon after his father's 
death George Hmelnicky found even his right to 
the hetmanship contested by John Wykowski, a 
Cossack representing the faction favorable to Po- 
land. The young hetman threw himself upon the 
mercies of the Tsar Alexis, but the majority of the 
Cossack settlements once more temporarily united 
themselves with Poland, lured by the promise, 
readily broken, that they should enjoy nationality 
as an independent duchy under the Polish crown. 
The Cossack officers of this faction now began to 
copy the manners of the Polish panye fatuously 
dreaming of a nobility of their own. At Knotop 
the Hetman Wykowski led these "free" Cossacks 
for the last time to victory against the Russian 
troops. But factions known as the parties of the 
"Left and Right Rank" (i. e. of the river Dnieper, 
forming the geographical boundary between the 
two Slav nations) divided the Cossacks who still 
professed allegiance to Poland into two opposing 
parties. Moreover the Polish nobles, blinded by 

93 



94 THE COSSACKS 

their fanatical faith in their feudal rights, lost every 
opportunity of rallying the Cossacks to their stan- 
dard. Religious intolerance soon played its fatal 
role. The Catholic bishop of Cracow grossly in- 
sulted the Orthodox metropolitan of Kiev, whose 
place had been assured him in the Plenary Council 
of the Diet. The Greek-Orthodox Cossacks, mad- 
dened by this act, joined in a sudden massacre of 
the adherents of the Hetman Wykowski. Under 
the leadership of the son of Bogdan the majority 
of the Cossack settlements returned once more to 
their Russian allegiance. The fairest provinces of 
the ancient "land of Rus," Kiev, Poltava and the 
broad steppes of the Ukraine were lost forever to 
the Polish Crown. Even in their undeveloped state 
these rich borderlands were recognized both by the 
rulers of Russia and Poland to be a prize essential 
to the predominance of their states. 

A vivid description of the appearance of the 
Ukraine at this time is to be found in Sienkiewicz' 
famous work, "With Fire and Sword." 

"The last traces of settled life ended on the way 
to the south, at no great distance beyond Chigirin 
on the side of the Dnieper, and on the side of the 
Dniester not far from Uman; thence forward to 
the bays and sea there was nothing but steppe after 
steppe, hemmed in by the two rivers as by a frame. 
At the bend of the Dnieper in the lower country 
beyond the cataracts Cossack life was seething, but 
in the open plains no man dwelt; only along the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR THE UKRAINE 95 

shores were nestled here and there little fields, like 
islands in the sea. The land belonged in name to 
Poland, but it was an empty land, in which the 
Commonwealth permitted the Tartars to graze 
their herds; but since the Cossacks prevented this 
frequently, the field of pasture was a field of battle 
too. 

How many struggles were fought in that region, 
how many people had laid down their lives there, 
no man had counted, no man remembered. Eagles, 
falcons, and ravens alone saw these; and whoever 
from a distance was heard the sound of wings and 
the call of ravens, whoever beheld the whirl of birds 
circling over one place, knew that corpses or un- 
buried bones were lying beneath. Men were hunted 
in the grass as wolves or wild goats. All who wished 
engaged in this hunt. Fugitives from the law de- 
fended themselves in the wild steppes. The armed 
herdsman guarded his flock, the warrior sought 
adventure, the robber plunder, the Cossack a Tar- 
tar, the Tartar a Cossack. It happened that whole 
bands guarded herds from troops of robbers. The 
steppe was both empty and filled, quiet and terrible, 
peaceable and full of ambushes; wild by reason of 
its wild plains, but wild, too, from the wild spirit 
of men. 

At times a great war filled it. Then there flowed 
over it like waves Tartar chambuls, Cossack regi- 
ments, Polish or Wallachian companies. In the 
night-time the neighing of horses answered the 



96 THE COSSACKS 

howling of wolves, the voices of drums and brazen 
trumpets flew on to the island of Ovid and the sea, 
and along the black trail of Kutchman there seemed 
an inundation of men. The boundaries of the Com- 
monwealth were guarded from Kamenyets to the 
Dnieper by outposts and stanitzi; and when the 
roads were about to swarm with people, it was 
known especially by the countless flocks of birds 
which, frightened by the Tartars, flew onward to 
the north. But the Tartar, if he slipped out from 
the Black Forest or crossed the Dniester from the 
Wallachian side, came by the southern provinces 
together with the birds." 

*J& jfe Jfe £fe Jfe 

*^ *f* vjv *i* *& 

By the terms of the Treaty of Andrusov, signed 
January 13th, 1667, the Tsar and the King of 
Poland came to a first definite arrangement cover- 
ing the territories of Ukraine. This document care- 
fully defined the influence each monarch was to 
exercise upon the Cossack settlements of the 
Dnieper. The classic stream became effectively 
the boundary between the two states. Kiev, the 
capital of Little Russia, was left (pending future 
negotiations, to which the Tsar Alexis looked for- 
ward without anxiety) in the hands of the Russians. 
The administration of the turbulent Zaporogian 
sitch was made subject to the joint "protection' ' of 
both Crowns, a pretension which, needless to say, 
the "Republic of the Free Cossacks beyond the 



THE STRUGGLE FOR THE UKRAINE 97 

Cataracts" disclaimed with scorn. Both high con- 
tracting parties agreed not to enlist in their re- 
spective armies subjects of the other crown, nor to 
encourage the emigration from one bank to another 
of Cossacks settled in their respective territory. 

A final article of the treaty solemnly set forth 
that neither King nor Tsar should interfere with 
any measures which the other High Contracting 
Party should deem necessary in order to discipline 
these new, involuntary subjects. At first kept 
secret, the clauses of this treaty which thus dis- 
posed of their territory without their consent be- 
came known to the Cossacks on both sides of the 
river. The settlements blazed with indignation. 
Doroshenko the hetman elected by the Polish 
faction, and Brukowicki, the hetman appointed by 
the Tsar, became equally objects of suspicion 
among the men of their own parties. A tumultuous 
invasion was immediately made by the Zaporogians 
upon the neighbouring Polish and Russian prov- 
inces in the defense of the "National Liberties." 
Every party now understood the term "Freedom" 
to mean the right to sack and pillage unrestrained 
the fair territory of the Ukraine whose interest all 
professed to defend. These disorders finally re- 
sulted in a second convention with Russia, to which 
the majority of the Cossacks adhered. 

Under the Hetman Samoilovitch devoted to the 
cause of the Tsar, the imperial power was greatly 
extended. By the signature of a new peace at 



98 THE COSSACKS 

Moscow in 1686 both Kiev and Smolensk were 
abandoned by Poland to the administration of 
Russia, the Tsar undertaking to maintain order 
along the troubled frontiers of the Crimean Tar- 
tars, thus leaving Sobieski free to continue his 
famous crusade against his sworn enemy, the Tur- 
kish Sultan. 

Through the skilful diplomacy of the Tsar 
Alexis — even greater as an empire builder than 
his son Peter the Great — these negotiations finally 
resulted in drawing closer the bond uniting 
the Cossack class to the Russian Crown. Their 
obstinate pride and determination to exercise their 
feudal "rights" over a free and warlike population 
had lost to the Polish nobles of the frontier the 
jurisdiction they had formerly claimed. It must 
not be supposed, however, that in passing to Rus- 
sian allegiance the Cossacks abandoned their claim 
to autonomy. 

The story of the Cossack revolts during the 
eighteenth century fills an important page in Rus- 
sian history. 

****** 

Even under the regime of the last Romanovs a 
service was held every year in many of the churches 
of Russia for the solemn cursing — with full 
ritual — of all religious and political heretics who 
in the past had ventured to disturb the public order 
of the empire. Mentioned separately the names of 



THE STRUGGLE FOR THE UKRAINE 99 

"the False Dmitri," Boris Godounov, Stenka 
Razin, Mazeppa and Pougatchev were greeted by 
the clergy with thundering responses of "Ana- 
thema! Anathema!" 

The fact that three of the persons judged worthy 
of this curious distinction were Cossacks, while "the 
False Dmitri" generally enjoyed their support, 
would seem to demonstrate that even the potent 
brew contained in the "melting-pot" of Russian im- 
perialism found difficulty in absorbing such recal- 
citrant elements as the "Republics" of the Dnieper, 
the Don and the Jaik. 

In spite of its brief importance, the Cossack re- 
volt led by Stenka Razin in the years 1671-3* may 
be dismissed as an outbreak of border ruffianism 
led by a particularly successful river pirate and 
brigand. Profiting by a time of famine and dis- 
tress along the Volga, Razin became a kind of 
border Robin Hood, enjoying the popularity easily 
acquired by anyone who pretends to revenge the 
wrongs of the poor upon the purses of the rich. 
His name will, moreover, always be remembered 
in Russia for its connection with the unforgetable 
lilt of the song "Volga, Volga," etc. But his over- 
throw near Zimbirsk by Bariatinski and his exe- 
cution at Moscow put a sudden end to a career 
which left no aftermath.** 

* The date is variously given from 1673 to 1679. 
** The incident celebrated in the popular song "Volga, 
Volga," tells of Razin's ready solution of an ethical prob- 



100 THE COSSACKS 

The early years of the reign of Peter I were 
troubled by a series of revolts or mutinies in the 
Cossack territories of the Don, which, although 
ending in a severe punishment of the ringleaders, 
exhibited the determination of this important 
branch of the "Free People" not to allow their 
privileges to be overridden by the growing power 
of the autocracy. 

As in the previous two centuries, the flight or 
emigration of their serfs from the estates of the 
boyars in the north had continued to excite the ap- 
prehension of the Russian nobles. During the 
opening years of the eighteenth century it was cal- 
culated that the call of liberty and free land had 
drawn nearly 30,000 serfs to the Cossack settle- 
ments of the Don. The Tsar, Peter the Great, 
whose far-reaching reforms did not contemplate 
any immediate amelioration of the lot of the 
peasants or the conditions of serfdom, now deter- 
mined to send Prince Dolgorouki to force these 
fugitives to return. While the Cossacks of the Don 
at first formally submitted to the authority of the 

lem arising through the capture by his Cossacks of a 
Persian princess endowed with such surpassing beauty 
that her charms threatened to distract the attention of 
the bandit leader from his sanguinary duties, and even 
to sow discord among his entire troop. In order to re- 
move this danger to his "cause" Stenka consigned his 
too-fascinating spoil of the Orient to a watery grave, 
greatly to the satisfaction of his followers and the en- 
hancement of his own popular reputation. 



THE STRUGGLE FOR THE UKRAINE 101 

Tsar's envoy, they privately determined in solemn 
council to support the new companions who had 
thus loyally sought their protection. Dolgorouki 
at first met with little opposition. During his re- 
turn journey, however, while encumbered with 
troops of captives, he was led into a Cossack ambush 
where the peasants were released and his army all 
but destroyed. The fact that a leader in this 
assault, a Cossack named Boulavin, was subse- 
quently elected hetman, added a fresh provocation 
to the previous conduct of the Don Cossacks. 

The result of these events was not long awaited. 
Peter, realizing that any weakness he might show 
in meeting the situation might end in a general re- 
volt of the provinces of the Ukraine, sent another 
Prince Dolgorouki with fresh troops to revenge his 
kinsman upon the inhabitants of the "turbulent 
provinces of the Don." 

"The principal mutineers," wrote this officer a 
few months later in a grim report addressed to the 
Emperor, "have been hanged. Of their companions 
one in every ten have been hanged; all of those I 
have had hanged were placed upon gibbets, which I 
erected on the rafts and set afloat, so that along 
the whole course of the river they might serve as 
an example."* 

After the sanguinary hint offered to the Cos- 
sacks of the Don, the Tsar was able to introduce 
his favourite methods of military administration 

* Rambaud, "Histoire de Russie," page 300. 



102 THE COSSACKS 

mong the "settlements" or slovods of the Don 

ithout further armed resistance. But the dis- 
content aroused by these innovations was deep and 
implacable. 

In considering the "treason" of Mazeppa and 
the course adopted by his fellow conspirators 
during the important events about to be narrated, 
the unpopularity of these reforms, which infringed 
some of the most cherished privileges assured by 
the Tsar's predecessors to the population of the 
Ukraine, must first be taken into account. 

The historians of this period have generally been 
too deeply in sympathy with the reforming policies 
of Peter the Great to do full justice to the Cossack 
cause. The actions of Mazeppa and his Cossack 
followers are only accounted perfidious obstacles in 
the pathway of Russia's progress towards unifica- 
tion. There is nothing, however, in the history of 
this fateful struggle, wherein the defeat of a couple 
of mutinous regiments of Cossacks and a few 
thousand exhausted Swedish veterans actually de- 
cided the balance of power in the north — to show 
that Mazeppa acted otherwise than as a disin- 
terested upholder of the rights and national priv- 
ileges of his adopted comrades in arms. 

Consideration of the part played by the Cossacks 
in the winter campaign of Poltava, throws an im- 
portant light on the military history of Charles 
XII. Even the "Madman of the North," in spite 
of his over-confident (not to say vain-glorious) 



THE STRUGGLE FOR THE UKRAINE 103 

methods of strategy, would never have permitted 
his army to be drawn so far from its base of sup- 
plies unless the assurance of Mazeppa had led him 
to suppose that a discontented "Free Ukraine" 
party were ready to welcome him as a deliverer. 



CHAPTER VI 

MAZEPPA 

TO have held for an instant the balance of power 
in the momentous struggle which fixed the su- 
premacy of Russia among the "Powers of the 
North" ; to lose by narrowest chance a great place 
in history; to be remembered only as the hero of 
a romantic poem; the central figure of a popular 
opera, — such has been the strange fate of the Cos- 
sack hetman Mazeppa ! * 

So complete was the downfall of the great Im- 
perial State which Sweden had planned to encircle 
the Baltic that Charles XII, whom Voltaire calls 
the leading military genius of his time, now appears 
but a pale and legendary figure when contrasted 
with Peter the Great — the mighty rival over whom 
he so nearly triumphed. No struggle of the 
eighteenth Century led to more portentous con- 
sequences than the winter campaign ending in the 
battle of Poltava. 

It is significant in view of present events to con- 
sider the part played by the Cossacks of the Ukraine 
during these decisive moments in the world's his- 

* See Tchaikowski's "Mazeppa" and Byron's poem of 
the same name. 

104 



MAZEPPA 105 

tory. Had the united strength of the Free Cos- 
sacks and the Ukrainian peasant-proprietors been 
exercised on behalf of Charles XII rather than in 
favor of their oppressor the Tsar, there is little 
cause to doubt that a great Ukrainian state might 
have arisen on the steppes of South Russia, to which 
the less favored lands of "Great Russia" and the 
forest regions to the north would perhaps have be- 
come tributary. For in spite of their relatively 
small numbers the warlike caste of the Cossacks 
possessed not only military training and initiative 
but also a strong sense of loyalty and fellowship in 
arms lacking to a great extent among the moujiki 
comprising Peter's armies. Had Mazeppa in ad- 
dition to his military qualities been born a Cossack 
instead of belonging to the hated Polish race, he 
might have united his adopted people at this critical 
moment of their career to face Peter's German-led 
and German-drilled troops. Napoleon's dictum 
that Russia is destined to become either Cossack or 
German appears all the more plausible in the light 
of the events surrounding the invasion of Charles 
XII. Indeed the French emperor — a close 
student and an ardent admirer of "the Mad King's" 
strategy — may have based his statement upon his 
appreciation of the all but forgotten yet fateful 
events which we shall now briefly review. 

Contemporary historians (including Voltaire, 
who, however, in matters of history scarcely ex- 
hibits the same critical spirit that won him so 



106 THE COSSACKS 

great a reputation in his discussion of religious 
questions) agree in repeating the romantic episode 
which transformed the youthful Mazeppa from 
a page at the brilliant Polish court into a 
leader of the rough Cossack bands of the Ukraine. 

Their accounts are, in the main, identical with 
the circumstances narrated in Byron's famous 
poem. Mazeppa was by birth a Polish noble from 
the province of Podolia. Through the graces of 
his person and an education which — at least by 
comparison — distinguished him among his fellows, 
he obtained the position of "serving gentleman" in 
the household of a rich Polish nobleman. The 
young wife of this notable, having somewhat over 
frankly exhibited her admiration for Mazeppa's 
qualities, the outraged husband conceived the ven- 
geance which effectually removed Mazeppa from 
the neighborhood of his inamorata, but with results 
far different from those planned or expected. The 
handsome page, bound, naked and defenceless, on 
the back of an unbroken stallion, instead of suc- 
cumbing to the roving wolves of the steppes, was 
carried by his mount among a herd of horses be- 
longing to a camp of wandering Cossacks. Join- 
ing this wild company the youth soon found him- 
self enrolled a member of the band, and in the 
course of a few months his education and personal 
bravery gave him the post of aide-de-camp to the 
hetman. 

At this point the legends surrounding Mazeppa's 



MAZEPPA 107 

advent among the Cossacks give place to more 
authentic accounts. A few years later we find 
him — risen in turn to the post of hetman — carry- 
ing on a series of forays in conjunction with Rus- 
sian troops against the Tartars of the Crimea. 
These skirmishes resulted in establishing his repu- 
tation, not only as a brilliant and successful leader 
in border warfare, but also as a dependable instru- 
ment of Russian policy. 

During the first siege of Azof, Peter the Great 
first learned from personal observation to appre- 
ciate the qualities and military capabilities of his 
new Cossack subjects. When a serious check to 
the Russian forces occurred before that strong 
fortress in 1695, it was the mobility and resource 
of the Cossack levies under Mazeppa that covered 
the retreat of the famous "New Armies" organized 
by the Tsar on the European model. The Emperor 
or "Bombardier Peter," serving at the time in their 
ranks under the command of General Lef ort, took 
part in all the hardships of this retreat. It was, 
however, through such defeats that every military 
advantage of Peter the Great was to be obtained. 
The faulty strategy which had failed to secure his 
object during these first operations was cast aside 
and Peter now conceived the idea of capturing 
Azof by a combined sea and land attack. 

On the upper reaches of the river Don, the Tsar 
began at once to construct his armada, consisting 
of "twenty-two galleys, a hundred rafts and 



108 THE COSSACKS 

canoes"* The number of the latter craft indicates 
that the part played by the Cossacks and notably 
the Zaporogians in these first Russian naval oper- 
ations must have been a considerable one. Relying 
on their skill as river boatmen and the tactics de- 
veloped during many a raid against the Turks in 
the Black Sea, they were now launched in a sudden 
attack on the Turkish fleet. Less than 1500 Cos- 
sacks manning long river-boats, similar to those 
used by the Zaporogians, did not hesitate to attack 
the great Turkish galleys defending the com- 
munications by means of which the beleaguered 
fortress received its provisions from the Turkish 
colonies of Anatolia. 

We can readily imagine with what enthusiasm 
and anxiety the Tsar followed the fortunes of the 
Cossack attack. Peter was himself in command of 
a small wooden frigate. He had now become 
"Steerman Peter Alexievitch," serving under the 
command of "Admiral" Lefort (for, together with 
the principal officers of his staff he had assumed 
naval titles and duties) . Prodigies of valour were 
displayed in the hand to hand conflict which en- 
sued. Little by little the surprising manoeuvres of 
the handy Cossack flotilla completely overcame the 
more regular naval strategy of the Turkish com- 
mander. The Ottoman fleet was gradually dis- 
persed and the heavy galleys — separated from 
their fellows and rendered helpless — were cap- 

* Rambaud, "Histoire de Russie," p. 363. 



MAZEPPA 109 

tured one by one. This wholly unexpected disaster 
cut off the Turks from their base of supplies and 
gave the garrison within the town no other al- 
ternative but to raise their turbans on the points of 
long lances in sign of surrender. 

Fifteen hundred ducats were accepted (not, we 
are told without much grumbling) by the Cos- 
sacks instead of the promised right of sacking the 
town. Mazeppa and his Cossack boatmen were 
personally thanked by the Tsar — the latter in high 
good humor because he had himself been promoted 
to a superior grade by Lefort for the part he had 
played in the fight. It was thus as actual comrades 
in arms that the basis of the long friendship be- 
tween the Emperor and Mazeppa was formed. 

In 1705 Peter carried out his wholesale execution 
of the streltzi — the privileged but undependable 
militia of the old Russian court — a terrible re- 
quital for their disloyal behaviour during his 
famous European tour. Following this event the 
Cossacks became a more important factor than 
ever in the border armies of Russia. At the same 
time, they received as recruits a great number of 
streltzi fleeing from Peter's drastic military re- 
forms. This new element was in all probability 
largely responsible for the revolt that spread 
among the Don Cossacks in the following year 
(1706). 

The victories of Azof and the conquest of the 
shores of the Black Sea awakened the military am- 



110 THE COSSACKS 

bitions of Tsar Peter. Moreover it was at this 
juncture that the King of Sweden died and his son 
Charles, a lad but 18 years of age, came to the 
throne. In the accession of so youthful a prince 
both the Tsar and the King of Poland saw an op- 
portunity of ridding themselves of a rival power 
whose ambition clashed with their own. The po- 
sition occupied by Sweden had long given her the 
control of the Balance of Power in the north. In 
every election for the Polish crown the King of 
Sweden had either sought the electoral honor for 
himself or had made his support essential in 
choosing the successful candidate. 

Another reason urged Augustus of Saxony, the 
newly elected King of Poland, to curb the hated 
"imperialism" of Sweden. So unpopular was this 
German prince in his elective kingdom that he wel- 
comed any opportunity for a foreign war which 
would turn the attention of his Slav subjects from 
internal affairs. Certain of victory in this enter- 
prise he even took steps to reserve the honors of the 
promised campaign for the detested bodyguard of 
German troops who had accompanied him from 
Saxony. But the King of Poland and the Tsar 
were to learn that Charles of Sweden, in spite of his 
youth, was the first military genius of his age and 
that he commanded the most perfectly drilled and 
disciplined army in the north. 

In the course of a single brilliant campaign 
Charles drove the King of Poland from the prov- 



MAZEPPA 111 

ince of Lithuania. The Russians who had mean- 
while advanced towards the Baltic were thrown into 
consternation by these events. At his leisure 
Charles now inflicted upon the Tsar's troops a 
great defeat at Narva. This victory, the more 
humiliating because even Peter's personal bravery 
was involved through stories of his cowardly con- 
duct during the battle, also threatened the Rus- 
sians' confidence in the value of the military re- 
forms he had been at so much pains to introduce in 
place of their old drill and tactics. Meanwhile, 
isolated from his subjects by the intrigues of Piper 
(Charles' great foreign minister, whose diplomacy 
was almost as redoubtable as his master's sword) 
the King of Poland had become a dishonoured fugi- 
tive in his own dominions. The new candidate im- 
posed upon the Poles in the person of Stanislaus 
Lesczynski was but a docile representative of the 
real King — Charles of Sweden. 

But the genius of Peter the Great never dis- 
played itself so brilliantly as after these disasters. 
"The Swedes," he repeated again and again, "will 
soon teach us how to fight." Gathering a new 
army he attempted to intervene on behalf 
of the deposed Saxon elector Charles easily 
crushed their united efforts at Altranstadt (1706). 
Even the electoral dominions of Saxony were now 
threatened and Augustus, in order to save his 
German possessions, was obliged formally to re- 
nounce all pretensions to the throne of Poland. So 



112 THE COSSACKS 

threatening was the danger that he consented 
at the bidding of Charles to write a letter of con- 
gratulation to his successor, Lesczynski. Peter 
nevertheless resolved to continue the contest. 

In the long struggle between Russia, Poland and 
Sweden that ensued, success almost invariably at- 
tended the armies of Charles XII. During this 
period the fortunes of Sweden were carried to their 
highest pinnacle. Historians now see that the 
"Mad King's" resolve to shatter the yoke of Mos- 
covite influence in Poland by striking at the heart 
of Peter's vast empire, was more than a military 
adventure. The success of such a plan would have 
safeguarded the new Swedish possessions along the 
Baltic and established upon a lasting foundation 
his scheme, now all but realized, of making Sweden 
the supreme arbiter of the north. 

But in the nine years which had elapsed since 
the battle of Narva, Charles had expended 
Sweden's hoarded treasure of men and money. 
Haw recruits now weakened the ranks of the vet- 
eran regiments he had inherited from his father. 
Youthful pride and obstinacy had induced him to 
discard the prudent ministers whose advice had 
been of such advantage in the earlier years of his 
reign. Charles might, with every advantage, have 
accorded the peace which the Tsar so earnestly de- 
sired in order to carry out his great plan of in- 
ternal reform. He, nevertheless, continued active 
preparations for a new campaign. 



MAZEPPA 113 

With the approach of the invading Swedish 
armies twenty thousand Cossacks were summoned 
by Peter to join in the defense of the Ukraine. His 
emissaries found the Cossack settlements in a state 
of almost open rebellion. A tax of seventy kopecks 
(no small sum of money in that day) had recently 
been placed upon every Cossack, not excepting 
those who were performing military service — an 
act bitterly resented as an infringement of the 
rights they had been assured at the time of their 
voluntary subjection to Russia. In Peter's plans 
for an accurate census of the Ukraine the Cossacks 
saw only a plan for fresh taxations and even more 
onerous terms of military service. 

By thus overriding privileges of the Ukraine, 
Peter had aroused the resentment of both Cossack 
and non-Cossack inhabitants. Both classes felt 
themselves subjected for the first time to the same 
treatment as the despised moujik population of 
Great Russia — the serfs of the great adminis- 
trative class favored bv Peter's "reforms." Ma- 
zeppa as hetman of the Cossacks of the Ukraine 
had for many years been accorded nearly all the 
honours of an independent prince. Secure in 
Peter's favour, which he had enjoyed ever since 
the siege of Azov, he had looked forward in his old 
age to the easy enjoyment of this lucrative post. 
He now saw himself forced to take sides in a 
quarrel the probable outcome of which would only 
rivet more tightly the yoke of Russian im- 



114 THE COSSACKS 

perialism on the inhabitants of the Cossack prov- 
inces. In the crisis now confronting him he took 
refuge in a time-honoured ruse. Although a half 
century of warlike service had till now seemed to 
weigh but lightly upon the veteran hetman, at 
Peter's summons he seemed suddenly overtaken by 
all the ills of deferred old age. For weeks at a time 
he remained in bed invisible to his followers, or else, 
propped in a great chair, supported by numerous 
cushions, he only received the Cossack officers to 
accept their condolences and to issue orders in the 
feeble voice of a valetudinarian. In expiation of 
past sins he commenced the construction of a great 
church, and to his former boon companions, ex- 
pressed the edifying sentiment that "his thoughts 
were wholly withdrawn to the affairs of another 
life." 

Nevertheless, in careful fulfillment of his duties 
as hetman he appeared to make every effort to fur- 
nish the Tsar with the levies of troops required. 
These were placed under the command of a Cos- 
sack colonel named Apostol. Although all these 
measures were taken in Mazeppa's name and he 
appeared zealously preparing to oppose the in- 
vasion of the Swedes, it seems equally certain, that 
at the same time constant negotiations were carried 
on with the emissaries of Charles. Offers of free- 
dom and autonomy for the Ukraine were freely 
made by the Swedish monarch: Mazeppa's place 
was assured as the head of an independent state 



MAZEPPA 115 

guaranteed by the armies of Charles. At last the 
hetman consented to enter into open revolt against 
the Tsar. In order to act with more certainty he 
suddenly quitted his role of an invalid and placed 
himself at the head of the Cossack armies. Ap- 
pearing to yield to the urgent appeals of the Rus- 
sian generals, he ordered all his polki to cross the 
Polish frontier.* 

Charles does not appear to have rated very high 
the military ability of the troops recruited among 
the Cossacks and peasant-proprietors of Little 
Russia. He was anxious, however, to secure a 
base for supplies for his own armies and guides 
for the vast unmapped country of the Ukraine, 
where he intended to develop his campaign. Per- 
haps the weakest feature of Charles' plans was his 
dangerous confidence in the ability of his veterans 
to overthrow almost any number of Russian troops 
which could be brought against him. But as the 
Cossack polki were only needed as auxiliaries, Ma- 
zeppa was instructed to maintain his fellow 
countrvmen in a state of "discontent" — a none 
too difficult task!! — without definitely engaging 
himself until the last moment. 

The hetman's position was, however, soon com- 

* Norberg's "History of Charles XII." Nothing in the 
history of the time is more confusing than the numbers 
given with respect to the troops engaged during this cam- 
paign. Even Norberg, although an eye-witness of the 
events he describes, cannot be wholly relied upon. 



116 THE COSSACK 

plicated by the constant reports which his rivals 
forwarded to the capital in order to convince the 
Tsar of his disloyalty. At first Peter was deaf to 
all such rumours, believing that Mazeppa in his old 
age would never betray a confidence he had done 
so much to deserve. As a fresh proof of his belief 
in the hetman's loyalty the Tsar sent back to the 
Ukraine bound in heavy chains, the principal 
agents of the malcontents who had undertaken 
the long journey to Moscow in order to denounce 
their chief. Thus perished two of the hetman's 
oldest comrades in arms, Iska, a colonel of the Cos- 
sacks of Poltava, devoted to the cause of Russia, 
and Koutchebey, chief of one of the most important 
families of the Ukraine. These chieftains who had 
been the first to discern Mazeppa's intended 
treachery, would have been spared by the hetman 
if they would join his side, but scorning to save 
their lives at such a cost, both were now put to a 
shameful death with heavy blows from a poleaxe 
before the assembled polk and their own fellow 
townsmen.* 

For a brief time Mazeppa appears again to have 
wavered, perhaps touched by this display of loyal 
confidence on the part of a master he was about to 
betray. In his indecision he decided to summon a 
council of the Cossack notables, and himself pro- 
posed that a deputation be sent to Moscow to lay 

* The above events are the subject of a famous scene 
in Tchaikowski's opera of "Mazeppa." 



MAZEPPA 117 

before the Tsar the grievances of the Ukraine. But 
Peter, growing suddenly suspicious, appears to 
have acted at this critical moment with the hasty 
violence which so often marred his statesmanship. 
His reply to the Cossack representatives was to 
throw into prison the entire deputation, at whose 
head the hetman had placed his favourite nephew. 
At the same time one of the Tsar's ablest generals, 
Mentchikov, commanding the Russian troops 
stationed in Cossack territory, received strict 
orders to spare no effort to prevent any com- 
munication between the Swedes and Poles. 

The tenor of these orders persuaded Ma- 
zeppa that his treacherous negotiations were known 
and he could hesitate no longer without endanger- 
ing his own safety. Placing garrisons chosen from 
the Cossacks of his faction in Romni, Tchernigov 
and Baturnin — thus securing important strategic 
points protecting his rear — he now advanced into 
Poland to join the Swedish armies, although keep- 
ing his intentions secret from those of his followers 
of whose loyalty he had reason to be doubt- 
ful. On the shores of the Desna, he drew up his 
entire army in a hollow square and in an impas- 
sioned harangue set forth their common wrongs. 
Appealing to the loyalty of the Cossack nation, he 
made the most of Peter's conduct respecting the 
ominous military reforms, recalling the Tsar's con- 
tempt for the agreements which, since the days of 
the Hetman Bogdan, had united Moscow and the 



118 THE COSSACKS 

Ukraine. But Mazeppa had either miscalculated 
the resentment which had been aroused by these 
measures, or, as appears more likely, the Cossacks 
hesitated to ally themselves with their ancient 
enemy, Poland. When thus called upon to forego 
at a few moments' notice the traditions and resent- 
ments of a life-time, they may have remembered 
that Mazeppa himself was of Polish origin. Their 
turbulent Orthodoxy caused them to recall all that 
their ancestors had suffered at the hands of the 
Catholic gentry and Jesuit leaders of the Polish 
court. The result of Mazeppa's ill-timed frank- 
ness was far different from his expectations. 
At first a grim silence greeted his eloquence, while 
murmurs of disapproval followed each new pro- 
posal. As he ended his appeal to Cossack preju- 
dice, cries of "Treason" were heard on all sides. 
In the uproar that followed Mazeppa even ap- 
pears to have had some difficulty in escaping from 
the violence of the Russian partisans among his 
excited followers. 

With but two regiments remaining loyal, both 
belonging to his personal guard, his "invasion" of 
Poland became little better than a flight from the 
Ukraine. Of all the "host" of Cossack cavalry 
with whom he had promised to await his allies upon 
the shores of the Desna there remained but a hand- 
ful of horsemen, while the main body of the 
Ukrainians and Cossacks returned homewards to 
make their submission to the Tsar's generals. 



MAZEPPA 119 

One consolation remained, however, to Mazeppa 
in his extremity. The famous Zaporogian Cos- 
sacks were by this time too deeply compromised by 
the wily hetman's intrigues to desert his cause and 
they now set forth in their usual tumultuous array 
to join Mazeppa's little army. 

Realizing the importance of ensuring the loyalty 
of this important part of the Cossack community, 
the Tsar had in the early stages of the events just 
narrated forwarded a present of sixty thousand 
florins to the sitch. It had, however, pleased the 
independent humour of these warriors to keep the 
money sent by the Russians and at the same time to 
declare for Charles and his Polish allies. In the 
pages of Norberg's History a full account is given 
of these negotiations, wherein the customs of the 
once famous Zaporogian brotherhood appear in no 
very creditable light. Their "war" leader, or 
hoshevoy ataman, was, at this time, a Cossack 
named Gordianko. This worthy had but a short 
time before narrowly escaped massacre in the 
course of the tumultuous public assembly which 
had elected him to his office — a fact for which he 
held the envoys of the Tsar responsible. It was 
the recollection of this incident which may have 
disposed him so warmly to adopt the cause of the 
Hetman Mazeppa. At a meeting held in a secret 
spot on the shore of the Dikanka the temporary 
submission of the Zaporogians to the Hetman of the 
Ukraine had been agreed upon. The horse-tail 



120 THE COSSACKS 

standards of the Zaporogians had been dipped be- 
fore the national flag of the Ukraine, and Mazeppa 
in an eloquent speech pointed out the necessity of 
an alliance against the Tsar. In order formally to 
celebrate the accession of the Zaporogians to the 
"Cossack cause" a banquet was now served to the 
delegates from the sitch. Around a board fur- 
nished with a magnificent service of silver plate 
(borrowed for the occasion from a Polish gentle- 
man among Mazeppa's retinue) the Zaporogians 
renewed their solemn oath of allegiance to the cause 
of Charles XII and the Polish party with whom he 
was in alliance. On leaving the tent where these 
ceremonies had taken place the Zaporogian dele- 
gates were found to be in a state of complete 
drunkenness. Some of the more intoxicated even 
insisted on taking away the silver plates and gob- 
lets as a souvenir of the occasion saying that this 
was a Zaporogian's privilege. An unfortunate 
butler in an ill-advised attempt to save his master's 
property aroused the anger of these turbulent 
guests and was seized and stabbed to death. Not 
content with thus vindicating their injured dignity, 
the noble Zaporogians now declared through their 
Koshevoy that if they were not allowed to keep this 
spoil, according to ancient custom, they would im- 
mediately break off the newly-formed union to 
which they had engaged their followers. The 
matter was satisfactorily arranged, but during a 
subsequent interview with the King of Sweden it 



MAZEPPA 121 

was considered wise to exact a promise from the 
Zaporogian envoys to "refrain from getting drunk 
before the banquet." It was upon the caprice of 
such allies that Charles depended to overthrow the 
power of Peter the Great I* 

* A strange survival of "Cossack law" has just come 
to light through an incident connected with the recent 
allied occupation of Archangel. Under the date of April 
5th, 1919, the New York Times printed the following 
cablegram : 

"Archangel, April 5, 1919 (Associated Press). — 
The theft of 4,000,000 rubles that were in possession of 
the Bolsheviki by a band of Circassian Cossack officers 
whose activities also included the arrest of the American 
Consul at Archangel and the kidnapping of the North 
Russian Government, was explained at the trial of the 
officers today before the supreme judiciary authority of 
Northern Russia. The officers, among whom were Cap- 
tain Bers and Colonel Melia, were convicted and sen- 
tenced to imprisonment and deprivation of their rank 
and decorations. Because of their military valor the 
court recommended that they be pardoned. 

"The defendants unfolded an astonishing story of the 
inner details of the days before the allied troops landed 
at Archangel and the political plots that occurred after- 
ward. They admitted nearly every accusation, pleading 
old Cossack laws and the political situation as justifica- 
tion. 

"Last July, when an allied landing at Archangel seemed 
imminent, Captain Bers and the other Cossacks were 
aligned with the Bolsheviki. As the allied transports ap- 
proached the city the bulk of the Bolshevist force fled, 
but Bers and the Cossacks remained behind as did Colonel 



122 THE COSSACKS 

In the meantime, Mentchikov, the Tsar's 
favourite, had not been idle. As we have already 
observed the Russian troops had for some time been 
preparing for the not unexpected defection of Ma- 
zeppa and the Zaporogians. Shortly after the het- 
man's departure, Mazeppa learned that his own 
household, together with all the provisions he had 
amassed there for the winter campaign of the 
Swedish army, had been captured by a brilliant 
Russian attack. To serve as an example the Cos- 
sack notables of the town were put to death by 
Mentchikov with every refinement of cruelty. On 

Potapoff, the Bolshevist commander, who was arrested 
later. 

"Captain Bers seized the safe containing the Bolshevist 
war fund of 4,000,000 rubles. Then, with Colonel Pota- 
poff, the Cossacks arrested the American Consul, Felix 
Cole; the British and French Consuls, and the French 
Military Mission. The allied officials were taken to a 
barn and hidden, the Cossacks holding them and the money 
as hostages until something definite happened. 

"When the allies landed and the local counter-revolution 
broke out almost simultaneously on Aug. 1 and 2, the 
Consuls were released. The Cossacks, however, after 
declaring themselves ready to support the new Govern- 
ment claimed that they were secretly against the Bol- 
sheviki throughout. 

Needless to add, such appeals to "old Cossack Law" 
would have little standing in the Cossack territories — 
although wild bands like the Siberian border ruffians led 
by General Senenov — "Cossacks" in name only — might 
resort to such a plea. 



MAZEPPA 128 

the same scaffold perished a famous Cossack colonel 
named Glutchov and a Prussian officer named 
Koenigseck who had acted as the Cossack Chief of 
Artillery. At the same time an effigy of Ma- 
zeppa was vicariously "tortured" and solemnly de- 
graded from the rank of hetman while a cross of 
St. Andrew was torn from the mannikin's breast. 
A more effectual punishment than this childish 
mummery was the solemn anathema launched 
against the hetman by the metropolitan of Kiev, a 
terrible indictment which included all the Orthodox 
Cossacks who were fighting with the heretics 
against the head of the Russian church. 

As in the case of the rebellious Donskoi, the 
lacerated bodies of the most important of Ma- 
zeppa's adherents were placed on rafts and sent 
adrift on the Dnieper, so that the news of the Tsar's 
vengeance might be spread along the whole course 
of that stream. 

At the famous battle of Poltava, whose course 
and the momentous results it entailed have so often 
been described, the Cossack nation again found 
itself hopelessly divided. The majority of the Cos- 
sacks and "free citizens" of the Ukraine fought 
under the banners of the Tsar, their oppressor. On 
the side of Charles XII the Zaporogians and the 
hetman's faithful regiments distinguished them- 
selves in a last vain blow for the liberties of the 
Ukraine. But the armies of Sweden, until now 
victorious against Russian troops, were for the first 



124 THE COSSACKS 

time definitely defeated. The Tsar's troops, 
thoroughly drilled after the European model and 
his generals schooled in adversity, were at last able 
to prove their worth and the value of Peter's pa- 
tient training. Russia's natural allies, cold and 
distance, added completeness to a defeat which an- 
ticipated the appalling disaster which overtook 
Napoleon a century later. Russia, not Sweden, be- 
came the preponderant power in the north of 
Europe, while, except for sporadic mutinies, little 
more was heard of the "liberties of the Ukraine" 
until the present day.* 

* "It was the recollection of Narva that caused Charles 
to lose the battle of Poltava. At daybreak twenty-one 
thousand confident Swedes attacked the Russian forces 
taking with them but four pieces of artillery. The King 
in person conducted the attack, lying in a litter drawn by 
two horses on account of the wound he had received a 
few days before. Slipenbak's famous cavalry charged the 
enemy with great courage. The Muscovite formations 
were driven in and the Tsar who had himself hurried to 
rally them received a bullet through his hat. 

"Mentchikov had three horses killed under him — and 
already the Swedish troopers raised a shout of victory." 

Shortly after, during the Russian counterattack, the 
two horses carrying the wounded chief of the Swedish 
forces were killed by a volley of grape shot, and their 
place was taken by 24 infantrymen — 21 of whom were 
shot down before the close of the engagement. Indeed 
the personal courage of both the Tsar (serving with the 
simple title of Major-general under General Sheremetiev) 
and Charles was displayed to every advantage, in their 
terrible duel for supremacy. 



MAZEPPA 125 

The conduct of Mazeppa, whose miscalculations 
had destroyed one of the chief factors upon which 
Charles' strategy had been based, now gives the lie 
to those who see in his character only the acts of a 
finished opportunist. Accompanied by some three 
thousand Cossacks, Mazeppa and Charles (who, in 
spite of an agonizing wound had directed the battle 
from a bed borne on a litter of pikes) fled towards 
Turkey. The indomitable spirit of the "Lion of 
the North" still dreamed of rallying Sweden's 
broken armies. His plan was now to join the 
troops of General Loewenhaupt, who were waiting 
the king's arrival somewhere on the Bessarabian 
border. On the shores of the Dnieper, the fugi- 

Charles seems to have based his strategic plan upon a 
flank attack by the main force of his cavalry under Gen- 
eral Creutz, but this officer lost himself in the steppes 
during the night and was absent at the critical moment, 
enabling the Tsar to rally his shattered legions, and to 
turn upon the broken formation of Slipenbak's victorious 
reiters. At the same time Prince Mentchikov cleverly 
manoeuvred his forces between the Swedes and their base 
at Poltava, thus cutting them effectually from their re- 
inforcements. Later in the day, this town was captured, 
and a number of officers, including Charles' great Minister 
Piper, fell into the hands of the Muscovites. When all 
appeared lost — the wounded Charles was placed upon 
a horse by the Polish Colonel Poniatowski — and escorted 
by a few dragoons and Cossacks, fled, more dead than 
alive, from the scene of this decisive blow to Sweden's 
greatness. (For a full account of the battle of Poltava 
see Voltaire's "History of Charles XII," pp. 199 et seq.) 



126 THE COSSACKS 

tives were thrust by their followers into a leaky 
boat and with an escort of about a dozen men 
abandoned to the swollen stream. Such was their 
peril that, in order to save themselves from sinking, 
the greater part of the hetman's treasure was 
thrown into the river. 

At the same time a terrible fate overtook a large 
body of Swedish and Cossack cavalry who sought 
to cross the flooded Dnieper by swimming their 
horses in a compact mass, following the methods of 
the ancient Tartar invaders. Near the middle of 
the river this living raft became broken apart and 
the struggling horsemen met a terrible death among 
the rocks and rapids. Swept along by the ice 
floes of the treacherous stream their bodies accom- 
panied the flight of their chief and the Hetman Ma- 
zeppa towards their exile in Turkish territory. 

A few days later the fugitive learned of the de- 
feat of the army commanded by Loewenhaupt. 
Continually pressed by Mentchikov's cavalry this 
general had finally been forced to surrender; 
fourteen thousand veteran Swedes laying down 
their arms to less than nine thousand Russians. 
The days when Charles' troops, as at Narva, 
had not hesitated to attack a force of Russians 
double or treble their own strength were ended. 
This victory was a final disaster to the Cossack 
faction devoted to Mazeppa. Mentchikov refused 
to include in the armistice and terms of surrender 
any amnesty for the Cossack partisans found 



MAZEPPA 127 

among the Swedish armies. All who could not es- 
cape were massacred on the river bank "within 
sight of their fatherland," * while the rest, accord- 
ing to the Tsar's orders, were relentlessly hunted 
down "in their lairs." 

After this execution only three thousand Zap- 
orogian warriors remained of all that famous 
brotherhood. On the approach of the Tsar's 
troops, these were forced to seek shelter among 
their ancient enemies the Turks. Realizing the 
value of such allies the Khan of the Crimean Tar- 
tars welcomed them in his camp, in spite of the 
wrong they had done his territory in the past. In 
order to show the Russians that they had definitely 
passed under Ottoman protection he conferred 
upon Mazeppa and the Zaporogian Hetman Gordi- 
anko the insignia of Turkish generals. Lands were 
also set apart for the Zaporogians on the shores of 
the Koninke, where in ancient time the sitch or 
encampment of the free republic had been 
located.** 

The unfortunate hetman, Mazeppa, did not long 
survive his disgrace. With the feeble Cossack es- 
cort which had remained faithful to his cause he 
took refuge (still accompanied by the King of 

* L,esur, p. 116. 

** The Zaporogians were, however, so reduced in num- 
bers that they were not able to resist the attacks of the 
Russians and soon found themselves obliged to retire 
farther into the Crimea. 



128 THE COSSACKS 

Sweden) at Bender under the protection of the 
Sultan of Turkey. Here his last days were con- 
stantly troubled by the fear that he might be de- 
livered up to the agents of the Tsar. For losing 
sight of more immediate advantages, Peter now 
showed himself determined to secure the person of 
the old comrade in arms who had so traitorously 
deserted him. But the Ottoman Sultan, in spite of 
bribes of money and offers even more advanta- 
geous, remained loyal to the Cossack chieftain. In 
their misfortune, a warm friendship appears to 
have united Mazeppa and the fallen hero Charles. 
All through the last illness of the former hetman, 
the young monarch continued to encourage the 
dying veteran with hopes of future success and 
revenge. Although Charles after a series of ex- 
traordinary adventures was at last restored to his 
native land, Mazeppa was unable to bear the double 
weight of years and misfortune. At the age of 
eighty he died in the Turkish camp without learn- 
ing of the disaster which soon after overtook his 
great enemy the Tsar, in the full tide of his suc- 
cess at the battle of the Pruth. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE END OF THE FREE UKRAINE: 
LITTLE RUSSIA 

NOT the least important result of the battle of 
Poltava was the subjection of the greater 
part of the Free Ukraine to the will of the Russian 
crown. Although a majority of the Cossack inhab- 
itants had refused to follow the lead of Mazeppa 
and might, therefore, have maintained in all fair- 
ness their rights to a continuation of the old privi- 
leges, the determination of Peter the Great to carry 
out his unifying reforms soon set definite bounds to 
the autonomy of the "settlements." 

Even those most loyal to the Russian alliance 
could not see without sorrow the abrogation of priv- 
ileges which dated from the days of Bogdan. More- 
over, even in the most Russianized districts, 
the Tsar's suspicion of these turbulent, half -alien 
subjects soon led to further vexations and laws 
restricting their ancient Cossack liberties. 

Peter's first act, after a strong military occupa- 
tion had secured the imperial hold, was to require 
of the hetman and the principal Cossack dignitaries 
an oath of allegiance identical in form to that im- 
posed upon the majority of his subjects. Hence- 

129 



130 THE COSSACKS 

forth the Tsar was legally "Autocrat" and the 
Ukraine became officially known by the hateful 
title as "the Province of Little Russia." 

At the same time a demand was made upon each 
of the Cossack polki or regiments for a contingent 
of men to be incorporated among the troops of the 
Russian army. By this means it was clearly indi- 
cated that the Cossacks of the Ukraine were now 
considered liable to regular military service like 
any other subjects of the empire. This policy also 
effectually weakened the power of resistance which 
the regiments furnished by the stanitzi might have 
opposed to Peter's "reforms" had they remained 
at their full strength. 

In order to accentuate the changes which the old 
"Free Cossack" regime had suffered separate 
courts of justice were established at Joukhoff to 
administer the new Russian law instead of the old 
Cossack law based upon the "Institutes of Magde- 
burg." The only appeal from this tribunal lay in 
the courts of the empire and not, as heretofore, in 
the great Cossack reunions or the Council of Elders 
of each stanitza. 

Meanwhile, in his camp at Bender, sometimes 
treated by the Turk as a distinguished prisoner, 
again consulted as an ally, Charles XII continued 
his intrigues against the Tsar and his vehement ap- 
peals to the powers of Europe to be allowed to 
return to his kingdom. 

After the death of Mazeppa, Charles had con- 



THE END OF THE FREE UKRAINE 131 

tinued on terms of friendly intimacy with Peter 
Orlick, who had been elected Hetman of the Zap- 
orogians. The new chief of the former Free Re- 
public was now wholly under the influence of his 
Turkish patrons. Although such base sycophancy 
offended the turbulent orthodoxy of his compan- 
ions, Orlick affected even the dress of the Ottoman 
protectors. In order to make his position more 
secure, he also married a Tartar woman chosen in 
the seraglio of the Khan of the Crimea. His con- 
duct could not fail to widen the breach which al- 
ready existed between the Zaporogians and the 
Cossacks of the Ukraine. 

But Peter still viewed with suspicion the border 
population of his new province. Any Cossack sus- 
pected of intercourse with the Zaporogians was 
cruelly put to death or transported to the pestilen- 
tial marshes of Lake Ladoga, where tremendous 
drainage works were in progress in the neighbour- 
hood of the new capital. This harsh treatment 
aroused widespread discontent throughout the 
Ukraine, and aware of this spirit of revolt, both the 
Turks and Zaporogians were encouraged to at- 
tempt once more an invasion of the Russian 
frontier. 

In furtherance of this scheme, the diplomats of 
the Porte and the Grand Vizir of the Khan of Tar- 
tary pretended to treat the Zaporogians as an in- 
dependent power. In a manifesto widely distrib- 
uted among the villages of the old Ukraine the 



132 THE COSSACKS 

Cossacks were called upon to return to their Polish 
allegiance. The Turks not only promised to re- 
establish the rights of the Zaporogians, but also 
offered to assist the Cossack settlements along the 
upper Dnieper to regain their former freedom, if 
they would openly resist the oppressions and ex- 
actions of the Russians. 

An expedition was next set on foot by the Porte 
wherein thirty thousand picked Tartar and Turkish 
troops were to join with Orlick and his Zaporo- 
gians in an invasion of the Russian and Polish 
Ukraine. In the same army was included a con- 
tingent of Poles disaffected by the Tsar's treat- 
ment of their country, under the leadership of a 
powerful noble of the ancient house of Pototski. 

During this skilfully planned political-military 
campaign — wherein the diplomacy of Charles is 
plainly visible — orders were given to spare the 
Poles and Cossacks of the invaded districts while 
punishing without mercy the Russian troops and 
their adherents. This scheme, however, did not 
coincide with the time-honoured methods employed 
by the Tartars in their warfare. The subjects of 
the Khan and the even less disciplined Zaporo- 
gians soon began to indulge their talents for ruth- 
less pillage, and following a few slight military 
successes in the beginning of the campaign, the 
allied armies dispersed in search of plunder. This 
enabled these scattered bands to be easily defeated 
by regular Russian troops under Prince Galitzine 



THE END OF THE FREE UKRAINE 133 

near Kiev. Their losses in battles and skirmishes 
are placed as high as five thousand. 

While the Zaporogians and their Cossack allies 
were thus wasting a last opportunity to recover the 
freedom of the Ukraine, a body of picked Tartar 
troops, under the command of the Khan in person, 
succeeded in penetrating in a compact mass to the 
heart of Russian territory as far as Vorentz. The 
horrors of this invasion, recalling the excesses of the 
Tartar hordes under Batu Khan, rallied many dis- 
tricts wavering in their loyalty to Peter's standard. 
The principal military result of the expedition was 
obtained at Samara, where the Khan succeeded in 
destroying the Russian shipyards and a half -built 
flotilla, by means of which the Tsar had planned 
to descend the river Dnieper in an attempt to 
transfer the seat of war to the frontier of the Otto- 
man dominions. This feat of arms was probably 
responsible in part for the disastrous results of the 
famous Pruth campaign, upon which Peter now 
embarked at the instance of the Hospodars of the 
Christian provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia. 

The events of this strange crusade, the most 
critical incident in Peter's career, do not belong to 
the subject in hand. It is sufficient to remark that 
his ill-prepared expedition cost Peter in the course 
of a few weeks, not only the prestige won through 
his defeat of the invincible armies of Charles of 
Sweden, but also placed him for a time at the en- 
tire mercy of his Turkish enemies. Had it not 



134 THE COSSACKS 

been for the fascinations and diplomacy of his new 
wife, the Empress Catherine, and the wholly un- 
expected clemency of the Turkish vizir, Tsar Peter 
— no longer "the Great" — would probably have 
ended his career a prisoner in Constantinople. 

At the cost of nearly all the ready money in his 
treasury, a dearly won military reputation and a 
disastrous treaty, the emperor of all the Russias 
was at last enabled to return to his dominions — in 
spite of the frenzied protests of the Swedish king. 

By the humiliating terms of the temporary peace 
of Falksen, which closed these "negotiations," the 
Russians returned the fortresses of Azov and Tag- 
anrog, commanding the littoral of the Black Sea, to 
the Turks. In the same document they promised 
not to infringe the "liberties" of the Cossacks of 
Poland nor those under the protection of the Khan 
of Crimea. But these advantages the Zaporogians 
enjoyed for only a brief period. By the terms of 
the Treaty of Pruth a more regular arrangement, 
far less favourable to the Free Cossacks, was con- 
cluded between the Tsar, the Khan of Crimea and 
the Porte. The Tsar was allowed to keep Kiev, 
together with the castles and fortified places de- 
fending the surrounding provinces as far south as 
Samara and Orel. To the "Free Cossacks" was 
assigned a territory with vaguely defined bound- 
aries, forming a buffer state between the Southern 
province belonging to the Tsar and the Turkish 
provinces of the Black Sea and the Crimean lit- 



THE END OF THE FREE UKRAINE 135 

toral. A final clause, highly galling to the national 
susceptibilities of the brotherhood, engaged the 
Tsar on one hand and the Khan and Sultan on the 
other to repress and punish any invasion by the 
Zaporogians across the borders of the territory set 
aside for their use. These measures were fatal to 
Orlick's dream of an independent Cossack princi- 
pality and put an end for the time being to further 
military activities on the part of his turbulent 
followers. 

Although the Zaporogians had voluntarily 
sought the protection, rather than an alliance with, 
the Turks and Tartars, and could therefore hope 
for no special favours from these traditional ene- 
mies, — they appear nevertheless to have felt 
greatly aggrieved at their treatment. A special 
cause of complaint was the too ready acquiescence 
of their commander, Orlick, in every new require- 
ment of the Turks. The Hetman, in order to re- 
main in favour with the Porte, even consented to 
allow the Cossacks to be deprived of their artillery, 
while constant drill and reviews enforcing the irk- 
some Turkish discipline in their ranks were looked 
upon as an infringement of their easy-going "mili- 
tary privileges." Although the Free Companions 
were soon weary of an alliance or tutelage which 
so estranged them from their fellow-Cossacks 
in Russia, during the lifetime of Peter the Great 
their overtures of peace were treated with contempt. 
It was not until the year 1732 that events occurred 



136 THE COSSACKS 

which caused a modification in Russia's policy 
towards them. On the death of Augustus II (to 
whom the Tsar had given the crown of Poland after 
Poltava), the Polish republic had relapsed into the 
customary state of anarchy which preceded the 
election of every new candidate to the vacant 
throne. Another king, Augustus III, was soon 
imposed upon the Poles by the Russian armies. Re- 
senting this act of arbitrary power, a party among 
the Polish nobility and peasants now resolved once 
more to ask for the help and intervention of the 
Tartars and Cossacks. 

In view of the possibility of such an invasion, 
the ministers of the Empress Ann were more ready 
than their predecessors to negotiate with the Zap- 
orogians. A Russian officer visited the Zaporo- 
gian camp with regalia and presents for the ataman 
and the chiefs of the Kourens.. Not only was an 
invitation extended to the "Free Companions" to 
return to their old allegiance, and to re-establish the 
sitch on Russian territory, but a present of several 
million roubles was also offered towards the re- 
building and equipment of their camp below the 
cataracts of the Dnieper. 

In order to counteract the success of these nego- 
tiations, the Sultan sent messengers from Constan- 
tinople charged with even richer presents than those 
offered by the diplomats of the Russian mission. 
But the Cossack leaders repulsed the Turk- 
ish overtures with scorn, and, loud in their expres- 



THE END OF THE FREE UKRAINE 137 

sions of attachment to the Orthdox Church and 
the Russian cause, sent the Pasha back to Constan- 
tinople with a negative reply. An untoward inci- 
dent, however, marred the dignity of this noble 
action and the patriotic alliance which it sealed. No 
sooner had the Turkish envoy reached the limits of 
the Ottoman dominions, than he was set upon by 
a company of Zaporogians, who had secretly fol- 
lowed his march till he had crossed the borders 
where the laws of hospitality protected him. The 
returned presents were then carried back as booty 
to the sitch. While disavowing this action, by a 
characteristic process of reasoning the Zaporogians 
nevertheless decided that the goods involved must 
now be considered "fair-prize," and as such they 
were duly divided among the entire company! 

In order to give immediate proof of their zeal 
for the Russian alliance, thus irretrievably renewed, 
a raid was forthwith undertaken upon the ill-starred 
provinces of the Polish frontier. The indiscrim- 
inate massacre which ensued warned the Russians 
of the dangers of allowing too much liberty to the 
Zaporogians. The government took measures to 
restrict in many ways the famous "liberties" of the 
sitch. Thus the "Free Companions" were forced 
for the first time to accept the control of a Russian 
officer stationed in their midst, while a council made 
up of three Russians and three Cossacks was placed 
in command of the territories assigned to them in 
the Ukraine. 



138 THE COSSACKS 

It will readily appear from the preceding para- 
graphs that the old characteristics of the sitch — a 
border garrison drawn from the Cossack frontier 
settlements of the Ukraine as a protection against 
the raids of Tartars — had by this time wholly dis- 
appeared. The Zaporogians had become in the 
course of time little more than an organized band of 
border ruffians, anxious only to sell their services 
to the best advantage. Their conduct during the 
years of their association with the Porte had more- 
over estranged them from their old neighbours. It is 
even doubtful whether the true "Cossacks" in their 
ranks represented any element but the offscourings 
and incorrigibles of the Ukrainian Cossack villages 
and farmsteads. 

The last occasion on which the Zaporogians were 
regularly employed as auxiliaries by the Russian 
government was in the war which broke out between 
Russia and the Porte. The open violation of the 
Treaty of Pruthby Peter's successors, the Empresses 
Elizabeth and Ann, left no other course open to the 
Sultan but war. In the famous campaigns which 
ensued, planned by General Miinnich, the Turkish 
provinces of the Black Sea and the territories of the 
Khan of the Crimea were overrun and devastated. 
Nearly eight thousand Zaporogians shared the diffi- 
culties and the privations of the expedition, and 
their knowledge of the peculiar tactics of desert 
warfare made them of great service. 

At the si^ge of Ochakov, an operation carried on 



THE END OF THE FREE UKRAINE 139 

by land and sea, the Zaporogians constructed a 
fleet of their famous long boats and in these fragile 
craft boldly attacked the Turkish fleet. As at the 
siege of Azov, the disconcerting movements of this 
light flotilla succeeded in inflicting heavy damage 
upon the galleons of the enemy. The characteristic 
reward received for these actions is set down by 
Lesur in the following terms : 

"Letters patent of 'satisf action' ; a great stand- 
ard embroidered with the arms of Russia; a horse- 
tail Cossack standard enriched with gold ; an enam- 
elled bundchuk or a mace for the koshevoy, and sev- 
eral millions of roubles as a gratification for the 
Tree Companions.' At the same time Ann is 
reported to have caused herself to be inscribed as 
a member of the sitch — a strange distinction, in- 
deed, for this womanless community." 

However, by thus aiding in the destruction of 
their traditional foes, the Tartars of the Crimea, 
the Zaporogians had at the same time removed the 
principal reason for which their unruly garrison 
had so long been tolerated. The passing of frontier 
conditions along the borders of the Ukraine inev- 
itably led to the disappearance of the Zaporogian 
sitch, the classic stronghold of Cossack liberties and 
traditions. 

In 1768, in a last burst of "Zaporogian fury," 
the garrison of the sitch had fallen upon the hap- 
less frontiers of the Polish Ukraine. "All who 
were not of the Greek religion, including old men, 



140 THE COSSACKS 

women, children, nobles, servants, monks, labourers, 
artisans, Jews, Catholics, Lutherans, were mas- 
sacred without distinction. The entire province 
presented the appearance of a city taken by as- 
sault." (Lesur.) 

The lust for plunder, masquerading under the 
excuse that their co-religionists were persecuted by 
the Poles, was the cause of this outrage. Such bar- 
barity sent a thrill of horror through all the civilized 
courts of Europe. So great was the indignation 
that the Empress Catherine hastened formally to 
disclaim all responsibility for the behaviour of her 
Zaporogian subjects. Russian regular troops were 
sent to surround the isolated bands returning to the 
sitchj and besides depriving them of their loot, 
forced the majority of the best troops to enroll in 
the sternly disciplined Cossack slovodni regi- 
ments of the Ukraine. Only the outbreak of an- 
other Turkish war saved the sitch from further re- 
prisals. A sudden attack by Turks and Tartars on 
the new frontier provinces, coinciding with the 
strange revolt of the wild Cossacks of the Asiatic 
frontier under Pougatchev — "the false Peter the 
Third" — deferred this righteous execution. 

Representations were, however, made to induce 
the Zaporogians "to conform to the laws of civiliza- 
tion." In vain they objected that their organiza- 
tion had always existed as it stood. Their peculiar 
discipline (or rather the lack of military rules) they 
justified by the successes of their tactics against the 



THE END OF THE FREE UKRAINE 141 

enemies of Russia. Forgetting their frequent dis- 
loyalties they invoked the ukases of former Tsars 
confirming them perpetually in their privileges. 
Their favourite threat when pressed by Catherine's 
officers was to pretend that they were about to re- 
turn to their Turkish allegiance. Thus, while the 
war with the Sultan lasted, Catherine feared to 
punish their insolence. 

But with the signing of the treaty of Kainardji 
the Empress turned her attention to reorganizing 
the Russian border provinces against a possible re- 
newal of Turkish aggression. It was now decreed 
that the Zaporogian sitch, the focus of all disorders 
in the Ukraine, should disappear. Even the priv- 
ilege of a spirited or heroic climax to their long 
career of disorder was to be denied them ! A force 
of troops so overwhelming that to resist would have 
appeared madness, surrounded the stronghold on 
every side. Completely surprised and cowed by 
such a determined campaign the Zaporogians 
"without even bloodshed" surrendered their arms 
to the representatives of Catherine's authority. The 
sitch was declared "forever destroyed and the name 
of Zaporogian wiped out." In order the more 
effectually to ensure that no reorganization of their 
band might take place, the territory of the Zaporo- 
gians was divided among the neighbouring prov- 
inces of Little Russia and colonized with "foreign- 
ers." The lands once under the immediate control 



142 THE COSSACKS 

of the sitch now form part of the Russian "govern- 
ment," of Ekaterinaslav, Kherson and Tauride.* 
The conditions of the Cossacks living in the 

* An ukase issued by Catherine in August, 1775, con- 
tains a careful analysis of her political reasons for the 
annihilation of the Zaporogians. It embodies, moreover, 
an interesting review of the history of the sitch which has 
generally formed the basis for the rare studies dealing 
with this subject. The following edifying passage would 
seem to indicate that the empress laid much of the blame 
for the disorderly conduct of the Zaporogians upon their 
repugnance for family life : "... Historians tell us that 
the Zaporogian Cossacks once formed part of the Cos- 
sacks of Little Russia, but that they afterwards separated 
themselves from these and adopted manners and customs 
of their own. While the former remained faithfully at- 
tached to their sovereign, the latter established them- 
selves beyond the cataracts of the Dnieper, where, having 
little by little augmented their number, they finally formed 
a warlike and political association, as singular in its 
customs as it was contrary to the views of the Creator. 
The ordinances which tend to facilitate the propagation 
of the human species were not considered by the Zaporo- 
gians. One of the principal rules of the establishment 
forbade the Cossacks to bring with them from the Ukraine 
their wives or children. . . . This Cossack custom, 
which arose from a desire not to expose their families 
to the fury of the enemy, and in order to improve their 
discipline by freeing them from domestic ties, was finally 
raised to the place of a cardinal principle by the Zaporo- 
gians. Through the workings of their law, which en- 
joined celibacy, they forgot their native land and lived 
on the shores of the Dnieper in a state of absolute 
irresponsibility." 



THE END OF THE FREE UKRAINE 143 

settlements or stanitzi of Little Russia differed but 
little at the end of the eighteenth century from that 
of the Onodvortzi, or peasant-proprietors of Greater 
Russia. From the account of contemporary- 
writers, it would appear that the warlike qualities 
which formerly distinguished the Ukraine — fos- 
tered by a life of continual campaigning against 
their numerous enemies — had largely disappeared 
under the conditions brought about by the long- 
enforced peace following the firm establishment of 
Russian rule. 

The old system of land tenure was fast disap- 
pearing and great estates had already been formed 
from Cossack land and granted to Russian and 
Polish nobles. Moreover at this time the ancient 
territory of the Free Ukraine was invaded on all 
sides by the advance of Russian colonists. An en- 
tire new province, known as New Servia, was thus 
settled on the Turkish frontiers with a population 
drawn from the Christian provinces of Turkey and 
peasants of Northern Russia. In order to estab- 
lish these newcomers as quickly as possible, Cath- 
erine sent regiments of dragoons to plough and 
sow these fertile territories long uncultivated owing 
to fear of the Mussulman. 

Internal change also threatened the characteris- 
tic civilization of the Cossacks of Little Russia. 
During the short-lived rule of Peter III an attempt 
was made to introduce a system of nobility among 
the officers of the Cossack regiments, undermining 



144 THE COSSACKS 

the democratic principle of equality which had 
formed one of the strongest traditions of Cossack 
life. Under Catherine the Great, even more stren- 
uous measures were taken to wipe out all differ- 
ences between the Ukraine and the neighbouring 
Russian provinces. 

During the strange parliament summoned at 
Petrograd by the Empress (in an access of what she 
flattered herself was "liberalism") we find "repre- 
sentatives" from the Ukraine Cossacks among the 
delegates forcibly gathered to deliberate upon a 
general system of laws for the "people" of Russia. 
Proud of their national customs and regulations, 
the Cossacks of the Ukraine appear to have strenu- 
ously resisted all these innovations. But the ter- 
rible Roumianzov, now Catherine's favourite min- 
ister, would not allow this imperial passion for 
reform to be denied. The delegates from the Cos- 
sack provinces were dragged to the capital in 
chains and forced to take part in the debates under 
the guard of Russian troops. As a result of their 
strange deliberations a new code of laws was 
adopted for the Ukraine, in which the ancient cus- 
toms of the Cossacks were given little consideration. 
Thus a n ew impetus was given the great migrat ion 
of Cossa cks towa rds the Caucasus and the Kou- 
ban — beyond the settlemen ts of the Don — where 
their descendants have p reserved their customs to 
the present day. 



CHAPTER VIII 

POUGATCHEV 

AT no time since the "Troublous Days" which 
followed the death of Boris Godounov has 
the padarok or public order of the Russian people 
seemed so irretrievably disturbed as at the present 
time. The period of anarchy to which the above 
name was given has always been looked upon with 
pious horror by the moujik, at heart a none too 
heroic lover of peace and quiet above all other con- 
siderations. Yet the "Red Terror" of the present 
day is not the only grave upheaval which, since the 
days of the "False Dmitri," has disturbed the slow 
evolution of Russia toward light and civilization. 
The strange "seeking" un-European idealism of the 
peasantry makes them liable — in spite of their 
instinctive docility — to almost savage outbreaks 
of impatience. Again and again false prophets 
have arisen to deceive the people. If true Russians, 
these have often deceived themselves. 

Pougatchev, the leader of the great Cossack re- 
volt during the latter half of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, was a typical specimen of the Russian mob- 
leader. In addition to ruthlessness and the gift of 
command he possessed talents of organization and 

145 



146 THE COSSACKS 

military leadership which the Bolshevik chieftains 
of the present day might well envy. Above all he 
appears as a master of the note of religious appeal 
which in Russia must always accompany "popular" 
success — an appeal recalling the dominant note 
of Russian life, whether made in the name of a 
schism in the Orthodox Church, on behalf of some 
socialist doctrine like that preached to-day in the 
form of a gospel "according to Marx."* 

After the partition of Poland and the suc- 
cess of Catherine's armies during their Polish cam- 
paigns, every curious detail with respect to the 
vast empire governed by "The Semiramis of the 
North" was eagerly sought after and commented 
upon in the distant capitals of Europe. The cor- 
respondence which the Empress Catherine con- 
scientiously maintained with Voltaire and Diderot, 
besides her letters to Grimm, her unofficial repre- 

* Among the author's books is an edition (in Ger- 
man) of a pamphlet entitled "The False Peter Third, or 
the Life and Adventures of the Rebel Yemelyan Pougat- 
chev." Originally published in England, by "Seyffert in 
Angel's Court, Westminster, 1775," this work was trans- 
lated into French, German and Dutch. Although the 
style of its contents scarcely rises above the descriptions 
contained in the "Chap-Books" of the time — dealing 
with the life and death of celebrated criminals — the ex- 
traordinary interest aroused by the now almost forgot- 
ten adventure of the Cossack "usurper" obtained for 
this biography a wide circulation for several generations 
following the strange events it describes. 



POUGATCHEV 147 

sentative and accredited gossip in Paris — kept this 
extraordinary woman constantly before the eyes of 
her contemporaries. For in spite of their fine con- 
tempt for kings and kingship, the philosophers 
thus honoured were in no way averse to publishing 
the details of their literary intimacy with a powerful 
sovereign. Catherine, on the other hand, forever 
cut off by the circumstances of her position from 
the brilliant society she felt so well qualified to 
grace, seems to have been consoled by the thought 
that vicariously at least she had become known to 
the salons of Paris and London. 

Social philosophy was the fashionable distraction 
of the hour. Like the "Parlor-Bolsheviki" of our 
own day, Catherine delighted in the parading be- 
fore her literary friends principles of the most ad- 
vanced and enlightened liberalism. Taking its 
tone from the dilettante reformers of the gardens 
of Versailles, the correspondence of the Empress- 
Autocrat is constantly concerned with the solution 
of problems concerning the welfare of her fellow- 
beings and the "Rights of Man." The news which 
she herself announced of the revolt of Pougatchev, 
bringing to the attention of these courtly republi- 
cans the stirring of mighty primitive forces in the 
depths of a wholly unknown Russia, came as a sen- 
sational bit of news to Catherine's correspondents. 
In the doings of the mysterious beings known as 
"Cossacks" they may perhaps have recognized the 
embodiment of that strange philosophical concep- 



148 THE COSSACKS 

tion, "Primitive Man," whose virtues were so 
lauded by their oracle, M. Rousseau. And the fact 
that the hardy rebel chieftain (the Cossack leader 
to whom Catherine refers as "M. Pougatchev") 
actually claimed to be the husband of the Tsarina 
added an almost scandalous touch to a situation 
filled with every possibility of interest. 

From the mass of exaggerations and fiction 
which have grown up about the great Cossack 
revolt and the person of Pougatchev we may now 
try to clear away some of the inaccuracies with 
which the legends of the Chap-Books have overlaid 
established facts. Yet even as set forth in the 
pages of the judicious historian of the Cossacks, 
Lesur, the barest report of these doings would 
seem hardly to require literary embellishment. "If 
audacity of character and conception — and ex- 
cesses dictated by brutality and ferocity — can 
make a brigand worthy to figure in history, no one 
has more merited this deplorable honour than the 
subject of the present account." ("Histoire des 
Kosaques," Lesur.) 

Yemelyan Pougatchev, generally known by the 
Russian diminutive of his name, "Yemelka," was 
born about 1723 in the Cossack stanitza of Zimov- 
nikaja on the Don. Enrolled at an early age in the 
Cossack regiment to which this district was obliged 
to furnish its quota, he followed the campaigns and 
shared in the honors gained by Catherine's 
armies during the Seven Years' War and in the 



POUGATCHEV 149 

subsequent War of 1769 against the Turks. After 
the siege of Bender some difference with his mili- 
tary chiefs caused him to desert from the army. 
Taking refuge in Poland he was next heard from in 
a convent of the Greek Orthodox Church near the 
Russian border. 

In the villages nearby the religious sectarians 
known as Easkolniki or "Old Believers" had estab- 
lished numerous "congregations." These fanatics 
represented the reactionaries or "Puritans" of the 
Russian Church. The principal tenet of their be- 
lief was an uncompromising resistance to the re- 
forms which Peter the Great had introduced in the 
ritual of the Greek Orthodox Church. It is diffi- 
cult to believe that the Cossack trooper Pougat- 
chev had any deep knowledge of the finer points of 
this ecclesiastical controversy. His rebellious na- 
ture, however, found sympathetic fellowship with 
the Raskolniki, who, on account of continued re- 
fusal to conform to the government's decrees, either 
in political or religious matters, were subject to 
persistent persecution. 

Above all else "The Old Believers" prided them- 
selves in following with literal exactitude the teach- 
ings of the Old Testament. A favourite text 
among them was the verse setting forth that 
"among the followers of Christ there shall be 
neither first nor last." To this doctrine of absolute 
equality — travestied by the Bolshevik philosophy 
of our own day — they joined an almost Moham- 



150 THE COSSACKS 

medan conviction that to die for the faith was the 
highest form of happiness. 

To stop the spread of Raskolnik doctrine all 
kinds of limitations had been placed upon the ac- 
tivities of their missionaries. In many places they 
were forbidden to own property, or when permit- 
ted to do so were forced to pay double taxes. In 
some towns it was enacted that, like Jews, the 
Raskolniki must wear clothing of a distinguishing 
colour and fashion. These measures had the usual 
effect of religious persecution: increasing both 
their zeal and numbers. 

In the older provinces of the Ukraine the strong 
arm of the Orthodox Church, strengthened by the 
determination of Peter the Great to rule over a 
uniform and religiously "united" empire, reduced 
even the most fanatical opponent of his policy to 
silence or obedience. To the Puritan-minded Ras- 
kolniki existence in "Holy Russia" became intol- 
erable. 

In the remote provinces of "New Russia," along 
the Asiatic frontier, especially among the Cossacks 
of the Jaik whose free traditions were opposed to 
any infringement of personal liberty, many Raskol- 
niki who had fled for refuge found that their teach- 
ing met with particular success.* 

* "Jaik" was the name by which the present River 
Ural was formerly known and the title of the Cossacks 
long settled on its shores. The name of Ural was im- 
posed by imperial edict as a punishment after the revolt 



POUGATCHEV 151 

It was probably in the company of one of these 
bands that Pougatchev emigrated to this congenial 
frontier atmosphere. Here he was assured of a 
welcome both as a Raskolniki and as a Cossack who 
had already suffered in the cause of liberty by re- 
sisting the harsh discipline of the slovodi of the 
Don. 

- Even allowing for a certain degree of religious 
sincerity in Pougatchev's beliefs, the course of con- 
duct he now adopted tends to show that considera- 
tions of morality entered very little into his plans. 
Soon after his arrival among the Jaikskoi, Pougat- 
chev became the chief of a mixed band of Cossacks 
and frontiersmen who, on the pretence of levying 
toll or passage money from the merchants travel- 
ling in the no-man's land near the River Kontai, 
in reality carried on depredations worthy only of 
a crew of bandits. For some time these strange 
Puritans continued to "spoil the Egyptians" with 
considerable success. In the end it was as a common 
highwayman, rather than on account of any dan- 
gerous "revolutionary" activities, that he earned 

led by Pougatchev had finally been stamped out. As an 
example of Cossack conservatism, my friend Prof. Borodin 
(a delegate of the Uralsk Cossacks to the recent Congress 
held in Petrograd) informs me that among the first 
projects entertained by the local gathering of the Cos- 
sacks in the town of Uralsk after the March revolution 
was a proposal to change the official title of the commu- 
nity by resuming the ancient name of "Cossacks of the 
Jaik." 



152 THE COSSACKS 

the distinction of being arrested by the authorities 
and taken to Kazan for judgment. Soon after, 
through the carelessness of the Russian officials in 
charge of his prison and the aid of fellow-Raskol- 
niki, he managed to escape. 

Now began the career which has given to Poug- 
atchev such strange and terrible notoriety. His 
plan was to return, with as little delay as possible, 
to the distant Cossack bands of the Jaik, where, 
among the malcontents of the frontier, he could 
resume his interrupted leadership. Disguised as 
a boatman he followed the great highway of the 
Volga and its tributaries until these carried him to 
a point where the settlements near the town of 
Jaikskoi could be reached.* 

His return came at an opportune moment. The 
Russian government had again attempted to intro- 
duce among the unruly inhabitants of this thinly 
populated province the same military reforms that 
had been imposed on the Cossacks of the Dnieper 
and Don. Besides the settlements of the ancient 
| Jaikskoi, whose origin is traced from the remnants 
of Scythian tribes, Cossacks of the lower Jaik 
included large numbers of runaway Russian serfs 
and religious refugees. Above all else they were a 
liberty-loving race. 

* So identified had the Cossacks become with the river 
traffic on these great streams that in Hakluyt's "Voyages" 
we find the English Merchants Adventurers of the Mus- 
covy company referring to their boatmen under the 
name of "Casaks or barkmen." 



POUGATCHEV 153 

Like all true frontiersmen the Jaik Cossacks 
held agriculture in small esteem. Cattle-herding, 
hunting and the rich fisheries of the river Ural fur- 
nished the means of a far easier existence. To 
these pleasant pursuits they added a profitable ex- 
ploitation of the great natural salt fields found in 
the marshes of the river. 

The Empress Catherine's policy was to build up 
in all her frontier provinces an agricultural popu- 
lation of peasant farmers. Although none of these 
foreign colonists were transferred to the Jaik, whole 
villages were settled about Samara on the Volga. 
But by this means new animosities were aroused, for 
in the process many of the original settlers were de- 
spoiled in favour of the newcomers. Most of the 
latter were, moreover, Germans, whose descendants, 
aliens in language and belief, were to be found, 
until the outbreak of the present war, living side 
by side with the Russian population, still divided 
from their neighbours by ancient quarrels.* 

At the same time that the Cossacks found them- 

* The foolish and short-sighted policy of the imperial 
German government in tampering with the Russian al- 
legiance of these colonists through specious offers of "dual 
nationality" made just before the outbreak of the war 
has led to the irremediable dispersal — two hundred years 
after their foundation — of the chief source of German 
influence in this district. Here, again, the cynical disre- 
spect of Germany's rulers for international conventions 
brought the natural punishment for their misdeeds on 
innocent heads. 



154 THE COSSACKS 

selves ousted from great tracts of "range" neces- 
sary for their cattle, the government had sought to 
force them to more "civilized pursuits" by cutting 
off the subsidies which had been allowed to every 
head of a Cossack family in return for his military 
services against the neighbouring Turkoman tribes- 
men. The strong element of Raskolniki among 
the Cossacks held to their beliefs with fanatical 
determination. These observances were often the 
cause of serious trouble with the authorities. Like 
the boyars of Peter's time, the sectarians refused, 
on religious grounds, to shave or "trim the corners 
of the beard." When the military authorities were 
ordered to enroll these matchless horsemen into 
regiments of "Hussars" for service during the 
Turkish war, the first act of the general in com- 
mand (a German, one of many serving in the 
Russian armies) was to order that his bearded 
recruits be publicly shorn in the principal square 
of the town of Jaikskoi. His fixed belief that no 
hussar could fight unless wearing moustaches pre- 
scribed by the German regulations ended in the 
massacre of all the foreign officers engaged in re- 
cruiting service. Only the arrival of regular troops 
put an end to this mutiny. The leaders, enjoying 
the approval and support of the Cossacks, easily 
escaped to the neighbouring desert. 

In their secret headquarters on the Kirghiz 
steppes, Pougatchev joined the leaders of this re- 
volt. Although in the eyes of the Tsarina's offi- 



POUGATCHEV 155 

cials Pougatchev was only an escaped convict, his 
prestige was now established among the "Old Be- 
lievers" by the imprisonment he had suffered for 
his religious belief. Successful defiance of the reg- 
ulations protecting the merchants on the caravan 
road was but an added title to their respect. Before 
long he found himself elected the leader of a band 
of desert "Free Companions," who, with some pre- 
tence of copying the organization and customs of 
the Zaporogian Cossacks, now declared themselves 
independent of all authority. Travelling merchants 
and caravans were attacked under the pretext of 
levying toll on all who ventured across their terri- 
tory. Organized "lifting" of the cattle belonging 
to their more peaceful neighbours also furnished 
the means of an easy, even joyous, existence. 

In the spring of the year 1773 Pougatchev, per- 
haps in order more formally to establish his leader- 
ship among his wild companions, or dreaming of 
wider opportunities for his ambition, appears first 
to have conceived the plan of appealing to their 
allegiance by claiming to be the murdered Tsar 
Peter III. Wildly improbable as the scheme may 
appear, it had, nevertheless, many features which 
promised success. The circumstances surround- 
ing the assassination of this unworthy monarch, 
whom Catherine had supplanted, had always re- 
mained a disquieting mystery to the peasants of 
Russia. According to popular belief (but for what 
historical reasons it is difficult to determine) he 



156 THE COSSACKS 

was generally supposed to have suffered martyr- 
dom on account of his devotion to the cause of the 
peasant reforms. Among the "Old Believers" and 
the other strange sects which flourished on the 
Russian borders, he was, moreover, greatly revered 
because of the leniency he had shown to their 
brethren during his brief and disordered reign. The 
manner in which the Empress had succeeded her 
unworthy husband on the throne had always been 
left unexplained by Catherine in her proclamations 
announcing this event in distant parts of the em- 
pire. The belief appears to have existed that the 
rightful Emperor was only held in prison by the 
officials devoted to Catherine and her favourites. 
Thus the rumour that "Father Peter" was still alive 
had probably long been current among the Cos- 
sacks of the Asiatic frontier before Pougatchev 
sought to turn the legend to his own advantage. 

Pougatchev, for this device or impersonation, 
could not even claim originality. Only a century 
before the boy Tsarevitch Dmitri — murdered 
by his ambitious guardian, Boris Goudonov — had 
been successfully impersonated by a mysterious 
personage known in history under the name of the 
"False Dmitri." This was probably one Gregory 
Ostrepiev, a young monk who, with the support 
of the Polish nobility (whose credulity, in view of 
the questions of policy it involved, it is unnecessary 
to fathom), actually succeeded in revenging upon 
the son of the Russian usurper the crime to which 



POUGATCHEV 157 

the father owed the throne. For a few months 
Gregory ruled the distracted Russian Empire as 
Tsar (1606) * 

That the "fraud" of Ostrepiev did not result in 
establishing a new dynasty permanently upon the 
Russian throne seems rather due to the character 
of the new Tsar than to any doubts with respect 
to his legitimate rights. His advent as a force 
capable of restoring order in the midst of the 
"Troublous Times" had been hailed with delight 
by the whole Russian people. Had not Dmitri 
shown himself too Polish in his habits and taste to 
suit his new subjects, he would probably have 
reigned to the end of his days. But "because he 
ridiculed the monks and went bear hunting like 
the Polish king, the populace of Moscow struck 
him down, burning his body as that of a 'sorcerer' 
who had deceived the people." 

The reign of the succeeding Tsar Shouiski 
(little more legitimate than the pretender who op- 
posed him) was troubled by a whole series of 
"False Dmitris." One of these, a Donskoi Cossack, 

* For a full discussion of the problem of the "False 
Dmitri" see an article in the Russian Review for Novem- 
ber, 1913, by George Afanasyev. The writer quotes an in- 
terview between the English traveller Cox and the Russian 
historian Miller, which tends to prove that the latter be- 
lieved the pretensions of Ostrepiev to be genuine. A 
study by Count Shermetev concerning this much-debated 
mystery is about to be published. 



158 THE COSSACKS 

succeeded in backing up his pretensions with a 
Falstaffian army in whose ranks marched four or 
five fellow-pretenders, each impersonating some 
member of the imperial family.* 

It would seem highly probable that the traditions 
of these more or less successful impostors would 
have been preserved in the folk-songs and legends 
of the Don stanitza where Pougatchev was born. 
In turning their example to account by attempting 
to exploit the belated popularity of the ignoble 
husband of Catherine the Great, the bandit leader 
only followed a generally successful precedent 
well known in Cossack history. 

From the beginning Pougatchev seems to have 
found little difficulty in inducing the majority of 
his companions to accept his pretensions to be Peter 
III, the rightful Tsar of Russia. While the Rus- 
sian authorities treated with ridicule the bombast 
of the false "monarch" who, from his capital or 
encampment in the salt desert of Jaik, addressed 
them in pompous manifestoes, new recruits flocked 
to his standard in alarming numbers. Soon the 
Raskolniki and the element of discontented peas- 
ants and landless Cossacks, to whom his eloquence 
was generally directed, began to believe in the in- 
fallibility of this fierce desert Messiah. A few 
easily won military successes also added stability 
to his throne. Skilfully choosing as the object of 
his attacks the almost defenceless German colon- 

* See Rambaud, "Histoire de Russia," page 288. 



POUGATCHEV 159 

ists, established by Catherine near the Free Cossack 
lands, and therefore objects of particular hatred 
to the entire Cossack population, — he directed a 
popular crusade to restore this territory to the pre- 
vious owners. His speedy triumphs were even 
tempered with a certain "royal" clemency. Leaving 
to his alien victims the bare necessities of existence ; 
in return for a promised tribute and the acknowl- 
edgment of his imperial claims their lives were 
spared. At the same time a rich booty provided 
his followers with much needed stores and equip- 
ment to continue their campaign. 

Along the course of the lower Jaik only the prin- 
cipal town, Jaikskoi, was able to resist the fury 
of Pougatchev's attack. When summoned to sur- 
render "in the name of the Tsar," the leaders of the 
garrison replied that they were too familiar with 
the name of Pougatchev and the reputation of the 
ruffians composing his band even to consider such 
an impudent demand. In the face of this challenge, 
whether because he felt himself unprepared for a 
siege, or on account of the possible effect of the 
derisive rebuke he had received upon the allegiance 
of his followers, Pougatchev now returned to his 
desert stronghold, where he began busily recruiting 
his forces for an attack upon Orenburg, the prin- 
cipal town of the Russian frontier provinces. 

The Governor of Orenburg was at this time an 
officer in the regular Russian army, newly arrived 
and without experience in desert warfare. Under- 



160 THE COSSACKS 

estimating the force of a movement led by so ridicu- 
lous an individual as a "false Peter III" he angrily 
ordered the small garrison of the two nearest fron- 
tier outposts to proceed, without delay, against the 
rebels. By a series of lightning marches — such as 
only Cossack troops are capable of performing — 
Pougatchev succeeded in defeating first one and 
then the other of these detachments. The soldiers 
who volunteered to join his ranks were welcomed 
among the armies of the pretender. The remainder, 
including nearly all the officers, were pitilessly mas- 
sacred. (When one recalls the composition of 
Catherine's frontier armies, the lifelong exile of the 
serf-soldiers and criminals who served out their 
penal sentences in its ranks, it is in no way sur- 
prising to learn that many disciplined recruits were 
gained by the rebels from prisoners and deserters 
from the imperial forces.) 

Orenburg, the rich centre of an important group 
of caravan trails crossing the Turcoman deserts, 
although defended by a fortress and heavy earthen 
walls, was next attacked. Only the courageous 
conduct of the garrison of a neighbouring post 
whose defense delayed the advance of the Cossacks 
long enough to enable the governor to obtain rein- 
forcements, saved the capital of Russia's Asiatic 
provinces from the fierce attack of Pougatchev's 
army. 

Following the continued success of their leader, 
these had now become a force by no means to be 



POUGATCHEV 161 

readily dispersed. Besides a majority of the Jaik- 
skoi Cossacks, Pougatchev had under his command 
a great body of Bashkir tribesmen and several 
bands of unruly Budjiak Tartars who had but 
recently been exiled to these deserts from the 
Crimea by Catherine's orders. Eleven thousand 
Kalmoucks, after massacring the Russian officials 
set over them, joined his standard in a body. Even 
a detachment of Polish gentlemen and their re- 
tainers, exiles on their way to Siberia, lent him the 
aid of their military knowledge, burning to avenge 
on Catherine, by any means at hand, the wrongs 
she had inflicted upon their country. 

Pougatchev now found his word the undisputed 
law over an empire geographically as vast as the 
Central Europe of to-day. In all this wide but 
sparsely settled territory only the garrisons of a 
few strongly fortified towns were able to hold out 
against his assaults. Had the Cossacks waited 
until hunger and despair brought about the sur- 
render of these isolated garrisons, the results might 
have been different. But in order to maintain the 
military ardour of his followers, anxious for plun- 
der, an active siege of Orenburg was undertaken. 
In full sight of the garrison of Orenburg, the Cos- 
sack leader carried out the reviews and ceremonies 
of his grotesque court, seeking by every means in 
his power to impress both upon his fickle subjects 
and the beleaguered enemy a sense of his new 
importance. 



162 THE COSSACKS 

The personality of Pougatchev had by this time 
become entirely merged in that of Peter III. Per- 
haps deluded by some strange doctrine of trans- 
substantiation, he appeared to have persuaded him- 
self of the actual truth of his claims. His supporters 
among the Raskolniki enabled him to adopt the 
role of prophet as well as Tsar. Dressed in gor- 
geous pontifical robes he distributed absolution and 
blessings on his wild followers reduced to a state of 
reverential awe by these mummeries. (Pushkin's 
"The Captain's Story," a piece of brilliant fiction 
founded on profound historical research, deals 
with these events.) 

On his banners was inscribed in letters of gold 
the legend "Redivivus et ultor" (Resurrected and 
avenging). About his person high-titled officers 
and attendants exercised their offices real and imag- 
inary. At meals Polish noblemen, of authentic lin- 
eage, served him as lackeys. To the sound of trum- 
pets and the beating of drums royal toasts were 
drunk — to the future of the "popular cause." In 
the government of his strange dominions a council 
of ministers, with the title of boyars, carried out 
his orders and issued ukases in due form. An order 
of chivalry was established which conferred grand- 
iloquent titles upon Cossack peasants and Kal- 
mouck braves. Pougatchev even succeeded in 
issuing a rough coinage bearing his effigy with the 
title "Peter III Emperor of all the Russias." 

Had Pougatchev possessed the strength of char- 



POUGATCHEV 163 

acter necessary to maintain the role he had first 
affected — that of a religious and social reformer — 
the forces of discontent might have gathered from 
all over Russia to his banners. The long-promised 
reforms, demanded by the peasants, had been but 
the amusement of Catherine's leisure. The endless 
formal enquiries and reports which she had caused 
to be drawn up with reference to taxation and peas- 
ant emancipation, and the "Congress" to which del- 
egates were dragged, sometimes in chains, to listen 
to adulation of their mistress, were only intended by 
her courtiers to flatter the Tsarina's "liberalism." 
The signs of a deep-rooted discontent with the 
established order was everywhere apparent. 

In spite of the grotesque pretensions which at- 
tended his career, Pougatchev's crusade against the 
nobles and landlords might have gathered a for- 
midable following. Like the "False Dmitri," he 
now dreamed of Moscow and a throne in the Krem- 
lin. The gravity of the situation which confronted 
Catherine was, to a certain degree, admitted. Proc- 
lamations in which she at last condescended to no- 
tice, and even argue, with respect to Pougatchev's 
claims to be Peter III now appeared. Although 
she wrote to Voltaire of the doings of "Monsieur 
de Pougatchev,"* she was, nevertheless, careful at 
the same time to warn her subjects "to obey only 
the laws signed by my own hand." An appeal was 

* Letters of Catherine to Voltaire. 



164 THE COSSACKS 

also made to the Cossacks of the Jaik to return to 
their true allegiance.* 

A measure far more dangerous to the cause of 
the pretender was an offer of a tremendous reward 
(100,000 roubles) to be paid for his person or proof 
of his death. Pougatchev, who could neither read 
nor write, caused a series of manifestos to be issued 
in answer to these ukases promising among other 
reforms freedom of the serfs and restoration of all 
Cossack privileges. This was a political move of 
no little sagacity. Even in the distant parts of 
European Russia Pougatchev's "program" was 
everywhere greeted with enthusiasm. 

The chief danger to Pougatchev's cause was now 
to arise from his own natural ferocity of character 
and the unbreakable chains of brutal passions. 
Imagining that his kingly state was now assured, 
he allowed himself to indulge with impunity in the 
most outrageous debauchery. His conduct soon 
became a cause for scandal among the Raskolnik 
elders who had formed his first disciples. The 
"unco guid" of the Cossack community — rigid fol- 
lowers of the text of the ancient Scriptures — 
might condone acts of freebooting and piracy which 
could be considered in accordance with the divine 
ordinance to "spoil the Egyptians," but the spec- 
tacle which their leader soon afforded them, and 
especially his amorous subjection to a notorious 
harlot of Jaikskoi, lost him the support of these 

* Lesur, page 221. 



POUGATCHEV 165 

rigid sectarians. When he insisted on the presence 
of the elders at a wedding feast with "Jezebel" (for 
in spite of the fact that he had a legally wedded 
Cossack wife, he was bent upon celebrating a fresh 
alliance by an orgy worthy in every respect of his 
bride) , a mutiny occurred among his followers. In 
order to distract the attention of his army from 
these troublesome domestic matters he now threat- 
ened to lay siege in regular form to the great city 
of Kazan, and a strong Russian force under Gen- 
eral Bibikov was sent to the relief of that place. 

By a quick march towards the frontier, Samara, 
an important city on the Volga, was recovered from 
the rebels, and the lower course of this stream once 
more opened to navigation. But the wild character 
of the country, among whose deserts and salt 
marshes his followers found themselves at home, 
enabled "Peter III" not only to keep his armies 
intact, but also to obtain a sudden advantage. Re- 
turning after a long detour, he surprised an isolated 
force forming the personal guard of General Bib- 
ikov. Amazed by this unexpected attack the Rus- 
sians were almost annihilated and their leader 
escaped, only to die later of a slight wound, which 
his rage and mortification alone rendered serious. 

Galitzine and his regulars now once more ap- 
peared upon the scene, attacking the Cossack bands 
with such vigour that in the course of a six hours' 
struggle the rebels were in their turn completely 
defeated. This time, Pougatchev with a few fol- 



166 THE COSSACKS 

lowers barely succeeded in escaping to the unknown 
country among the foothills of the Urals. Through 
the success of these military operations the great 
Cossack rebellion was generally supposed in Eu- 
rope to be at an end. But the cause of Pougatchev 
had become identified with the wrongs of the peas- 
ants, the sufferings of the enforced colonists of the 
Siberian frontier and the "privileges" of which the 
Cossacks felt themselves unjustly deprived. Even 
the wild tribes of Bashkirs and Kalmoucks inhab- 
iting the deserts and steppes about Orenburg 
looked to Pougatchev to relieve them of the taxes 
and tasks imposed upon them by Catherine's offi- 
cers. His misfortunes, moreover, had done much to 
wipe out the unfavourable impression made by his 
excesses in the minds of the Puritan Raskolniki. 
In ever-increasing numbers recruits once more 
travelled by desert ways, unknown to the Russians, 
to join the new "Army of Revenge." Fanaticized 
by his indomitable eloquence and energy, his wild 
horsemen made a sudden descent upon the frontier 
blockhouses undeceiving the officials who had 
thought Pougatchev's powers for mischief -making 
at an end. 

This time the help of one of Russia's ablest gen- 
erals, Michelson (a soldier of Scottish descent, the 
favourite pupil of the great Romarzov), was in- 
voked to meet the situation. Wholly new tactics 
were adopted. Quantities of mounted troops were 
improvised from the foot regiments, and during a 



POUGATCHEV 167 

running battle of three days Michelson finally suc- 
ceeded in cornering his enemy. A crushing defeat 
put an end to the strange career of the Cossack 
"Peter III" — "redivivus" no more. Pougatchev 
escaped, but veteran troops, including several regi- 
ments of Cossacks from the Don lately returned 
from the Turkish wars, were now used by the Rus- 
sian authorities to hunt down the scattered bands 
of the malcontents. A last tragic episode was, how- 
ever, to be added to the ill-fame of the chieftain. 

The wrongs of the dispossessed Cossacks and 
peasants who formed a large part of Pougatchev's 
armies, justified in a measure their actions and 
their revolt against tyranny. But no cause, how- 
ever just, could long prosper under such a leader. 
To the last, the career of the "Cossack Tsar" re- 
mains unrelieved by a single ray of noble or gener- 
ous intention. Seldom was a popular "hero" so 
unworthy of his opportunities. The news of the 
final defeat of Pougatchev's armies was coupled 
with that of a brutal murder which, even in his re- 
treat, he paused to accomplish. The philosopher 
Lowitz, who, with a few learned companions, had 
been engaged in surveying a route for a canal to 
join the great highway of the Volga with the Black 
Sea, was surprised by the fleeing "Tsar Peter" 
during this work. The celebrated savant — to give 
point to a brutal jest — was impaled upon a long 
stick "in order to continue star gazing." 

Pougatchev's intemperate and brutal nature was 



168 THE COSSACKS 

also the cause of his final capture. In spite of the 
reward set upon his head, three faithful compan- 
ions had shared with him the dangers and priva- 
tions of his flight. While lurking in hiding among 
the salt lakes not far from the Jaik, one of these 
three — overcome by fatigue and the hopelessness 
of their situation — dared to suggest to his chief 
the advisability of considering a surrender. Poug- 
atchev, perhaps thinking to overawe his comrades, 
without hesitation drove his dagger into the 
speaker's throat. 

The companions of the murdered man now threw 
themselves on their leader and binding him with 
his own horse's reins and bridle, carried him to the 
Russian troops under General Zaharov, com- 
manding the town of Jaikskoi. From this place, 
which had been the scene of "Peter Ill's" wildest 
exploits and excess successes, he was carried to 
Moscow in an iron cage, a species of terrible show 
and example to all the villages along the way. 

In captivity Pougatchev showed the psychologi- 
cal transformations so common to wild and brutal 
natures. His jailers and those who visited him in his 
prison were astonished to find, instead of the ter- 
rible monster created by popular belief, a mild and 
cringing convict continually hopeful of a reprieve. 

Yet the extraordinary powers of persuasion or 
personal magnetism of which the Cossack leader 
was master were to be exercised even upon his 
executioner. The sentence passed upon the "False 



POUGATCHEV 169 

Peter the Third" — no more barbarous than his 
crimes demanded in the opinion of his time — re- 
quired that "he should be quartered alive, his hands 
and feet cut off, and his ashes then to be thrown to 
the winds." As a last grace the public hangman 
consented on the scaffold to alter the course of this 
terrible punishment, moved by Pougatchev's tears 
and eloquent pleadings. First cutting off the ban- 
dit's head at a single blow, he thus mercifully ended 
his sufferings. As a punishment for this humane 
weakness, defeating the ends of justice, the un- 
fortunate official was given the knout, his tongue 
was cut out, and he was sent to end his days in Si- 
berian banishment. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE HETMAN PLATOV 

IN the days of public rejoicing following the 
Peace of Paris no hero of the armies of the 
Grand Coalition which had overthrown Napoleon 
enjoyed such unrivalled popularity as the Hetman 
Platov, the leader of the Cossacks of the Don. 
The versions of his terrifying exploits which became 
current in Europe were often so exaggerated 
that the hetman — like Mazeppa — began to be 
considered by a later generation as a character in 
fiction. Always modest in his own accounts, Platov 
became the victim of overzealous biographers. It 
is only in recent years that writers of his own race 
have succeeded in making clear the history of the 
stirring events in which he took part and the im- 
portant military role played by the Cossacks during 
the retreat of the French from Moscow. 

During Platov's visit to England in the personal 
suite of the Emperor Alexander, his fame threat- 
ened to eclipse even the reception accorded to the 
"Tsar Idealist" himself. At a memorable race 
meeting held in Ascot in the year 1815 the hetman 
was almost mobbed by his admirers : "his arrival was 
greeted by a tempest of cheers so prolonged that 

170 




THE HETMAN PLATOV 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 171 

they threatened to interrupt the serious busi- 
ness of the occasion. Five men at one time were 
shaking his hand, each one passing on to a friend 
the finger that he had enjoyed the honour of hold- 
ing. An attention even more annoying to the gal- 
lant Cossack was offered by a throng of ladies, who, 
armed with scissors, insisted either upon being pre- 
sented with locks of the hero's hair, or when, for 
obvious reasons, this was refused, on cutting sou- 
venirs from the tail of his charger."* Yet in spite 
of this overwhelming reception, Platov always 
looked back on this stay among the warm-hearted 
Londoners as the happiest epoch of his life. 

Platov was born about the middle of the XVIIIth 
century at Tcherkass, the old capital of the Don 
Cossacks. 

The exact date of his birth is unknown because 
in later years he was always careful to conceal his 
age from his companions-in-arms — many of them 
younger than his own grandchildren. His military 
career, like that of the veteran Prince Kutusov, 
forms a connecting link between the group of bril- 
liant generals who directed the victorious wars of 
Catherine the Great and the history of the Napo- 
leonic era. 

Ivan Platov, the future hetman's father, was a 
simple Cossack officer who, like his son, was born 
at Tcherkass. It is considered a noteworthy fact 

* Platov's own account, quoted by Prof. A. E. Tar- 
rasov, in "The Hetman Platov," in Russian, 1902. 



172 THE COSSACKS 

by his biographers that the elder Platov knew how 
to read and write, advantages which he took pains 
to secure for his son, young Matvei Ivanovitch. But 
in the warlike times of Catherine's reign school days 
were necessarily brief in all Cossack stanitzi on the 
Don. At the age of thirteen we find the fu- 
ture hetman serving as a private in the ranks of the 
Tcherkask regiment. 

Like all true Cossacks Platov welcomed the end 
of the long peace which was marked by the out- 
break of the first Turkish war. Great, therefore, 
was his disappointment when the elder Platov was 
summoned (on account of his knowledge of the 
frontier conditions) to the general staff in Petro- 
grad, so that in his absence his son became charged 
with the direction of the family's modest affairs. It 
was in disobedience, therefore, of his father's orders 
that in 1770 Platov joined his old comrades-in-arms 
in the Crimea, where they were then serving under 
the command of the Russian General Dolgorouki. 
His stay at the main front was, however, not a 
prolonged one, for we next hear of him stationed 
among the frontier garrisons of Cossack troops on 
the shores of the Kouban. With them he engaged 
in a brisk little campaign against the warlike moun- 
taineers of the Caucasus, a never failing accompa- 
niment of Russia's wars against the Sultan. 

During the years 1775-1777 Platov served with 
the Russian troops engaged in hunting down the 
rebellious Cossacks of the Jaik, who under their 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 173 

unworthy leader, Pougatchev, were defending their 
right to follow out their own religious customs and 
beliefs. After the capture and execution of the 
"False Tsar Peter," Platov continued to serve in 
the border garrison along the Kouban, earning dis- 
tinction and experience in campaigns against the 
courageous Tcherkess, Lesghians and the other 
mountain tribesmen of these romantic regions. 

The outbreak of Catherine's second war against 
the Turks was welcomed by Platov as offering an 
opportunity for more rapid promotion. At the 
famous siege of Otchakov he found himself pro- 
moted to be a colonel of Cossacks, and in 1789 
(when his regiment captured the famous Turkish 
general Gazan Pasha) Potemkin consented to lend 
him his powerful support, the surest road to further 
promotion. To please her favourite the empress 
appointed Platov "Hetman of all the Cossacks of 
the Don," and to this title was shortly added that 
of Governor of the province of Ekaterinoslav. 

A few months after this event the young het- 
man's reputation for personal bravery and his con- 
tinued warlike success caused Catherine to express 
a wish to meet the "most famous Cossack of her 
armies." This high compliment, which was con- 
veyed to Platov through his protector, Potemkin, 
involved a long and tedious journey to Petrograd. 
At court he was received with favours which might 
well have turned the course of his career, or even 



174 THE COSSACKS 

engaged him in a dangerous rivalry with his patron 
the favourite. 

The great Catherine, although by no means in 
her first youth, had never ceased to show her in- 
terest in gallant — and especially in handsome 
— soldiers. For those who bravely served her 
she considered no reward too exalted. So 
pleased was the Empress with the young Cossack's 
martial yet modest bearing that she even accorded 
him the honour of personally conducting him 
through the marvels of the imperial apartments. 
For nearly a week the Winter Palace hummed 
with the news of his good fortune. Ambassadors 
of Great Powers began to concern themselves with 
a possible change in the imperial "policy" of the 
day. But age had not made Catherine more con- 
stant. Soon tiring of the simple and soldierly 
manners of her new favourite, an intimation that 
she would no longer detain him from his military 
duties ended his brief career as a courtier. We can 
well imagine with what relief young Platov quitted 
the stifling atmosphere of the Winter Palace, heavy 
with scent and intrigue, to breathe once more the 
pure breezes of the Don steppes. 

Yet this interlude in Platov's military career does 
not seem to have caused him to lose the favour of 
the powerful Potemkin. In their cynical enjoy- 
ment of power, the group of "ministers" surround- 
ing the Empress had little time for jealousy. Under 
Zoubov, another favourite promoted by Catherine 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 175 

to be "Hetman of all the Cossack Armies," he 
fought through the Persian campaign of 1795 and 
was present at the fall of Baku and Elizabethpol. 
The cross of the Order of Saint Vladimir and a 
sword bearing the legend in diamonds "In recogni- 
tion of Bravery," was the reward of Platov's ser- 
vices at court and in the field. 

The death of Catherine the Great brought her 
son, the Emperor Paul, to the throne. This im- 
perial Hamlet — whose youth was constantly over- 
shadowed by the fate of his father — had always 
considered his mother in the light of a usurper. 
Constant brooding over his wrongs and misfortunes 
had made him in reality little better than a mad- 
man. "You must know," he once declared to a for- 
eign ambassador soon after his accession, "that 
there is no one worth considering in Russia, except 
the person to whom I am speaking, and then only 
during the time I am addressing myself to him." 
But the Emperor Paul had little of the character of 
Louis XIV except his overwhelming self-conceit. 
The Tsar hated everyone who had found favour in 
his mother's eyes. Every plan by which she had 
raised her adopted country to be the first Power of 
Europe, even the glorious military traditions of 
Catherine's reign, were set at naught and revised. 
Paul's mania for reforming and his passion for 
copying Prussian models did not even spare the 
national uniforms of the Russian army, so suitable 
for the changing climate and conditions of steppe 



176 THE COSSACKS 

warfare. These were replaced by tight-fitting 
Prussian military tunics, plaited queues, buckled 
shoes, gaiters and the awkward beaver hats worn 
by Frederick's troops of the line.* 

How seriously the Emperor was attached to these 
military details is shown by his treatment of the 
veteran general Souvarov, hero of a hundred vic- 
torious battles, who was sent to Siberia for com- 
posing a little rhyme in which the virtues of "wig- 
powder" and "gun-powder" were somewhat disre- 
spectfully compared. 

"Russia no longer looks for conquest, nor war- 
like aggrandizement — only for peace." This was 
the platitudinous message which Paul's diplomats 
were instructed to deliver to a distracted Europe! 

In pursuit of his mania for undoing the schemes 
of his great predecessor, the Russian troops on the 
frontiers of Persia were so abruptly withdrawn 
that the brave little kingdom of Georgia, which 
for centuries had formed the bulwark of Chris- 
tianity against the forces of Islam, was left to bear, 
almost without warning, the brunt of the uneven 
struggle. 

During this time the subject of our sketch, the 
Hetman Platov, like many others of Catherine's 
party, had the misfortune to fall under the morbid 
displeasure of the Emperor. No reasons were given 
for the order which exiled him to the provincial 
capital of Kostroma, from which place he was soon 

* See Rambaud, "Histoire de Russie," p. 513. 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 177 

afterwards brought under heavy guard to Petro- 
grad and imprisoned in the fortress of St. Peter 
and St. Paul.* 

Platov has himself described the painful condi- 
tions of his captivity passed in company with many 
other distinguished officials of Catherine's reign. 
How this second involuntary stay in the capital 
must have recalled strange memories of his first 
visit! "Even in Summer the dampness and cold 
which radiate from the walls of our prisons pene- 
trate to the very bones. In the hot season we all 
suffer from fever. In winter, however, our condi- 
tion is far worse. We must then huddle together 
about the stoves to keep from freezing, in spite of 
the blinding sting of the wood smoke which fills our 
cells. Nearly all of us are half blind from this 
cause. Our only distraction is to watch the antics 
of the rats. These are everywhere, but though at 
first odious, they have finally became my most 
sympathetic companions." 

Like many another brave soldier of Catherine's 
army, Platov might have remained forgotten 
among the sad company gathered in this famous 
fortress until death released him, had not a fresh 
turn in the weather-vane of Paul's foreign policy 
incidentally recalled him to his sovereign's 

* It is now known that Platov was accused of tam- 
pering with the loyalty of the Kirghiz and Kalmouk 
tribesmen with whom the honest soldier had become popu- 
lar during his campaign along the Kouban. 



178 THE COSSACKS 

memory. The course of the French Revolution 
had been diverted by the personal ambitions of 
Bonaparte into channels more acceptable to Paul's 
autocratic views. Moreover the cowardice or treach- 
ery shown by his Austrian allies during the cam- 
paign against the French in Switzerland had cooled 
his enthusiasm for the Hapsburgs. Napoleon's 
great victory over the Austrian armies at Marengo 
was applauded all over Russia. The English am- 
bassador, always alert to note the varying changes 
of Paul's enthusiasms, now reported that "por- 
traits of Bonaparte are found even in the public 
rooms of the imperial palaces." 

Bonaparte, on the other hand, lost no oppor- 
tunity to reconcile Paul to the great changes which 
had taken place since the Revolution on the map 
of Europe. Soon after an interchange of notes 
marking beyond a doubt the new disposition of the 
Russian foreign office, the courts of Europe heard 
with astonishment of a "great project" upon which 
the armies of France and Russia were about to 
embark. From the correspondence which was now 
exchanged between Paul and Napoleon with re- 
spect to an invasion of India it is difficult to deter- 
mine how deeply Napoleon entered into the prac- 
tical details of the adventurous scheme. His doubts 
concerning its successful outcome are everywhere 
apparent. But as a diversion likely to trouble pub- 
lic opinion in Great Britain, and as a lure whereby 
the Russian monarch might be more firmly attached 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 179 

to his system, he undoubtedly saw in this venture a 
useful adjunct of his policies. In documents mi- 
nutely setting forth the military itinerary which lay 
before the Franco-Russian troops may still be seen 
the objections noted down in the handwriting of 
the greatest general of his age, followed by the 
"triumphant" refutations of the Russian Em- 
peror scrawled in an unformed schoolboy's hand. 
According to this plan thirty-five thousand picked 
French troops (at Paul's request these were to be 
commanded by General Massena, the hero of the 
great Russian disaster at Zurich) were to descend 
the Danube in vessels requisitioned from the Aus- 
trian government. Crossing the Black Sea to 
Taganrog, flatboats were then to carry them up 
the course of the river Don to Piati-Isbiankaja. 
Here it was planned that the expedition should 
march overland to Tsaritzin on the Volga. De- 
scending that great river to Astrakhan, the French 
detachment would cross the Caspian to Asterabad, 
where a corps of 35,000 Russians were to await 
their arrival. 

Impatient to take the first steps in the execution 
of his "great design," Paul now ordered Russian 
troops once more to occupy the Caucasus and on 
the demand of the son of the heroic Tsar Heraclius 
of Georgia, this warlike little kingdom was peace- 
fully incorporated in the Russian empire. At the 
same time General Knorring was ordered to lead a 
Russian division against the upper Indus, passing 



180 THE COSSACKS 

through the country under the jurisdiction of the 
powerful Khans of Khiva and Bokhara. To co- 
operate with this difficult campaign the hetman of 
the Cossacks of the Don, Orlov Denissov, was 
ordered to proceed at once to Orenburg. 

The soldier who, of all his officers, could best 
aid the emperor in carrying out the proposed plan, 
was a forgotten prisoner in the fortress of St. Peter 
and St. Paul. To transfer the ex-hetman Platov 
from a prison cell to the command of an important 
military expedition was an act which presented no 
incongruities to a convinced autocrat like Paul. 
The imprisoned Cossack chieftain, thus suddenly 
drawn from the society of rats and convicts by a 
summons to the Imperial Council, was confident 
that his last hour had come. Shaved and dressed in 
his old-fashioned uniform — scorning the assur- 
ances of his jailers — he bade farewell to his com- 
rades, and marched bravely forth to his expected 
execution. His surprise may be imagined when he 
found himself suddenly introduced by a side door 
to the Winter Palace, where, after a meal such as 
he had not enjoyed for months, he was led directly 
into the private study of the Emperor. 

Reassured by the Emperor's manner (which as 
Platov himself tells us seemed to ignore both the 
hetman's past wrongs and Paul's share therein) 
the prisoner of yesterday was invited to give his 
opinion upon the intricate military affairs which 
now engaged the Tsar's attention. 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 181 

On the table before the strangely assorted pair 
were spread out the only available maps of the 
almost unknown regions of Asia where Paul had 
planned to initiate the role of Alexander the Great. 
No one knew better than Platov himself the unsur- 
mountable difficulties of these desert wastes. "Here 
is the path I have chosen for you — the route of 
Alexander the Great," said the Emperor dramati- 
cally. "Can you follow it, to India?" 

Although recognizing at a glance the military 
faults and incongruities of the scheme proposed by 
the Emperor Paul, Platov (as he declares in 
his memoirs) was fully "resolved to follow any line 
which led away from the prison of St. Peter and 
St. Paul." Without further committing himself 
he gravely nodded his approval of everything the 
imperial strategist had proposed. More than ever 
satisfied with his own plan and his manner of choos- 
ing a general to carry it out, the Emperor dismissed 
his late prisoner. On the lapel of Platov's coat, 
stained and discoloured by the smoke and dirt of his 
prison, glittered the high Russian order of St. John 
of Jerusalem. In his pocket was a draft on the im- 
perial treasury for an almost unlimited amount, 
and a snuffbox ornamented with the insignificant 
features of his master. It is more than probable 
that Platov, whose breast had already been deco- 
rated by the great Catherine "with as many crosses 
as a graveyard," cared but little for these honours 
compared to the liberty he thus so strangely 
regained. 



182 THE COSSACKS 

Without waiting the expiration of the three days 
graciously allowed him in Petrograd, the hetman 
set out for the Don, where he was received as one 
returning from the dead. Cutting short all demon- 
strations of welcome he began at once to gather the 
troops of the warlike community, without, however, 
disclosing the objects of the ill-planned campaign 
upon which they were to set forth. Every Cossack 
capable of carrying a lance was ordered to report 
at a given rendezvous, bringing with him two 
horses and six weeks' provisions. In the month of 
January, 1801, 27,500 Cossacks of the Don were 
able to set forth on their long march towards the 
deserts of Asia. 

In Orenburg the Russian governor, Bakmetiev, 
had assembled provisions, camel transport and 
even a corps of interpreters speaking the languages 
or dialects of the numerous tribes whose countries 
they were to traverse. Before their departure 
from the fortress a letter from Paul was read prom- 
ising the Cossacks "all the riches of India." Plung- 
ing boldly into the almost trackless wilderness that 
lay beyond the frontier outposts the Russian troops 
travelled like mariners across an unknown sea, 
marching, or rather navigating, by means of the 
compass and observed positions of the stars. 

On the horizon hovered great bands of horse- 
men, Bashkirs and Kalmoucks, astonished to see a 
body of troops so numerous that they could not be 
attacked by any known tactics of desert warfare. 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 183 

Without fear of surprise or ambuscade the troops 
marched at their ease and in open order. But an- 
other danger now threatened the Cossack army. 
The distant objective of their march having 
become rumoured about, the Kirghiz camel drivers 
began deserting with their animals, thus depriving 
the Russians of the only means of transport. It 
even became necessary to abandon a large part of 
the provisions, tents and other equipment neces- 
sary for the troops. Moreover, on account of the 
intense cold the supply of fuel was rapidly disap- 
pearing. The Cossacks, unaccustomed to economy 
in this respect, insisted upon building roaring fires 
during the long cold nights. Sickness also broke 
out in the ranks and the problem of transporting 
those no longer capable of remaining in the saddle 
added to Platov's difficulties. In the absence of all 
recognizable marks in the featureless landscape one 
day's march appeared to the impatient and half 
mutinous troops precisely like that of the preceding 
day. The desert mirage, amazingly vivid in these 
latitudes, showed them the domes of distant cities 
and oases which they took to be Khiva or Bokhara, 
and the next moment dissolved these fairy scenes 
ito clouds of mist. Such phenomena increased the 
superstitious fears of the Cossacks. Many declared 
that the whole army was bewitched by Tartar sor- 
cerers and that they were all marching forward 
without advancing towards their goal.* 

* The old atavistic fear of the Tartars has fostered 
among the moujiks and Cossacks of the frontiers a 



184 THE COSSACKS 

At last the hetman was obliged to yield to the 
demands of the mutineers. Glad of an excuse 
which hindered him from further carrying out 
plans he considered impossible of execution, he 
ordered that a camp be formed to rest the tired 
horses and attend to the sick. At the same time he 
sent out scouts and patrols in order to obtain news 
of Knorring's expedition. All soon realized that 
this halt was but the preliminary to an inevitable 
return. In the mirage which haunted the desert 
horizon Platov now began to see once more the 
slender golden spire which crowns the grim sil- 
houette of the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. 

It was at this critical juncture that a messenger 
arrived with the welcome news of the sudden death 
of the Russian Emperor. Paul had been the vic- 
tim of a palace revolution which resulted in seating 
his son, the popular young Grand Duke Alexander, 
on the throne. All Russia breathed more freely, 
but nowhere, we may be sure, was the news of this 
change more welcome than in the famine-stricken 
camp where, on the pitiless Turcoman desert, the 
uncalculating ambition and faulty geography of a 
tyrant had engaged the Cossacks of the Don in a 
hopeless quest. Thus ended the first and last at- 

firm belief in the uncanny powers of the yellow races. 
The magic lore of the Tartar priests and Kalmouck 
bonzes is held in high respect to the present day among 
the superstitious peasants of the Russian frontier. See 
M. P. Price's "Siberia." 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 185 

tempt of an invasion of India by land, a plan which, 
since the days of Peter the Great, had tempted the 
ambition of succeeding Russian sovereigns. 

The years that ensued between the events just 
related and the outbreak of the Napoleonic wars of 
1807-1812 were perhaps the happiest of Platov's 
life. The Russian biographer assures us "the het- 
man was looked upon by the Don Cossacks as a 
father to whom the wants of all the Cossacks were 
as well known as the needs of his own family." The 
peaceful duties of administrating the Cossack start- 
itzi kept him more busily employed than during his 
most energetic campaigns. The capital of the Don 
provinces, Novotcherkask, was moved under his 
direction to its present site, and the ancient capital, 
always subject to the inundations of the Don, 
was abandoned. The foundations of several 
important public buildings were laid, and among 
the first of these a cathedral and public schools. 
The education of the Cossack children was the sub- 
ject of the hetman's particular attention. A school 
system was organized caring for the needs of the 
children in the most remote stanitzi. Those who 
could not otherwise secure the services of a teacher 
were brought to Novotcherkask at the public ex- 
pense. 

At the same time Platov used all his powerful 
influence to preserve the traditions of Cossack na- 
tional life. To those who wished to change the 
"old frontier ways" he pointed out that it was only 



186 THE COSSACKS 

their military organization which differentiated the 
Cossacks from the surrounding peasant population, 
whose abject condition they all despised. Towards 
a class of young Cossack officers, who thought by 
abandoning their characteristic uniforms and by 
imitating the ways and manners of the local Rus- 
sian nobility to raise themselves above their fellows, 
he was especially severe. Recognizing that in uni- 
versal service — the basis of the Cossack system 
of land tenure — lay their chief usefulness to the 
Russian state, he mercilessly enforced the disci- 
pline necessary to ensure their privileged position. 
Even at the present day the lessons taught by the 
worthy hetman are playing their part in keeping 
the Cossacks alive to their duties in the great strug- 
gle which Russian democracy is waging against 
Bolshevism and the poison of Marxian Kultur. 

At the outbreak of the first Russian campaign 
against the Emperor Napoleon, in 1807, Platov 
was nearly sixty years of age. He might, there- 
fore, have honourably asked for permission to con- 
tinue his calm and useful retirement. But like an- 
other famous Cossack leader, Mazeppa, his most 
renowned exploits were to be performed after the 
age when a general — and especially a leader of 
light cavalry — is considered unfit for active ser- 
vice. During the Turkish wars Russia's Cossack 
cavalry and the peculiar tactics which their officers 
had perfected had aroused the interest of military 
students all over Europe. But although invaluable 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 187 

for scouting and reconnoissance, and for harrying 
the flanks of an enemy or turning defeat into a 
rout, the Cossacks were nevertheless the despair 
of the German and Austrian tacticians of the Em- 
peror Alexander's staff. The ideal soldier, ac- 
cording to these experts, was embodied in the little 
blocks of wood they could manoeuvre so convinc- 
ingly across their field maps. 

When, as only too often happened, these theoreti- 
cal operations refused to repeat themselves as 
planned, it was the Russian troops, especially the 
Cossacks, who were generally blamed. But Prince 
Koutusov, the popular hero of Catherine's wars, 
who recognized the irreconcilable differences be- 
tween the Russian and German methods and shared 
the national "distrust" of Alexander's foreign ad- 
visers, placed great reliance upon the Cossack 
levies. His whole campaign against Napoleon's 
army after the disaster of Moscow was indeed a 
strategic development of Cossack principles — the 
manoeuvres which had been practised for centuries 
upon the broad plain of Scythia since the days of 
Darius' invasions.* 

To carry out his plan of a long and orderly re- 
treat — leading his enemy ever deeper into the 
treacherous steppes — he needed just such mobile 
troops as were furnished by the soldiers of the Don, 

* Tolstoi's famous novel, "War and Peace," contains 
an interesting account, historically true, of the military 
conditions prevailing in Russia at this time. 



188 THE COSSACKS 

the Kouban, the Terek and the Urals. But only a 
leader enjoying their respect and confidence could 
turn their military talents to the best account. 
Platov's personal popularity and prestige made 
him an invaluable leader of these redoubtable 
squadrons among whom the free Cossack spirit 
too often degenerated into license and indiscipline. 
For this reason, in spite of his advanced years, 
Koutousov urged him to take part in the coming 
campaign. 

In treating of the glorious campaign of 1812 — 
the uprising of the entire Russian nation against 
Napoleon's ambition for World Power — only the 
part played by the Cossack troops will be consid- 
ered here. Thirty-six thousand Cossacks formed 
the vanguard of the heroic army which first ad- 
vanced against Napoleon. These were divided into 
fifty polki or "regiments," each provided with its 
own light artillery. The flying column under Pla- 
tov's immediate command was composed of four- 
teen regiments, to which were added a few chas- 
seurs and dragoons. The principal duty assigned 
to the Donskoi troops was that of covering the 
flanks of the second army under the command of 
his old friend and patron, Prince Bagration. 

A great rivalry soon sprang up between Na- 
poleon's scouts — Polish uhlans and hussars — and 
the Cossack cavalry. During the advance of King 
Jerome's army (at the very beginning of the 
French attack) three regiments of uhlans on their 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 189 

way to Novgoroudka were cut off in the village of 
Karelichi by two regiments of Platov's troops.* 
The greater part of the uhlans fell or were taken 
prisoner at the first onslaught, while the rest were 
pursued to the very outpost of Jerome's head- 
quarters. 

For more than a month these combats between 
Polish and Cossack cavalry continued. It was 
largely due to such minor engagements fought be- 
tween these old-time enemies that the advance of 
the main French army was so seriously retarded, a 
delay which enabled Bagration to retire in good 
order to his entrenchments at Bobrinsk. 

This task accomplished Platov was ordered to 
cross the Dnieper and to join the first army. While 
attached to this new command Platov and his Cos- 
sacks witnessed the terrible disaster of the first bat- 
tle of Bordino. While this engagement was not 
of a character to give the Cossacks an opportunity 
to employ their peculiar tactics, nevertheless Prince 
Koutousov, the aged commander-in-chief, declared 
that Platov was "getting too old for active service." 
Showing little mercy for an officer who had grown 
grey in the same service as himself, Koutousov re- 
lieved the veteran of his command in the field, 
ordering him to proceed to the Don in order to 
gather new reinforcements. 

Platov's soldierly rejoinder to this crushing blow 
was redoubled activity in serving the cause 

* The Fifth Isvolaski and the Second Karpor. 



190 THE COSSACKS 

of his beloved country, now grown so desperate. 
Every Cossack military colony had long since been 
swept of recruits at the first call to arms. Only 
the old men and children too young to bear arms 
had been left to help the women in tilling the field. 
It was among these veterans of Catherine's wars 
and their younger grandchildren that Platov de- 
termined to find material for his new regiments. 
Weapons were improvised from the ancient 
trophies of former Cossack campaigns, taken from 
the walls and made over to suit more modern mu- 
nitions. From the Monument of Victory erected 
after the Turkish wars before the new church in 
Novotcherkask six ancient bronze cannon were re- 
covered and made serviceable by mounting them 
on cart wheels. In an incredibly short space of 
time this heroic "forlorn" was ready for the road. 
Between grey-headed heroes who had served with 
Potemkin and Souvarov were placed children of 
twelve and fourteen glowing with pleasure at this 
unexpected privilege of playing a soldier's part. 
None but a Cossack population could have pro- 
duced such a levy. At their head marched the sep- 
tuagenarian hetman, now once more serving as the 
simple colonel of a Cossack polk. 

The arrival of these recruits in the Russian 
headquarters camp at Tarantino was the occasion 
of a spirited ovation. Without regard to the pres- 
ence of Koutousov, the Cossack sires, in high spirits, 
showered good-natured abuse upon the regular 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 191 

regiments drawn up at parade. "We have come to 
rescue you with all our poor little grandchildren," 
they cried. 

Already they had proven their worth. A sotnia 
from one of these veteran regiments (the regiment 
of Isvolaski) had averaged sixty versts a day in 
their march from the Don to Tarantino, a record 
scarcely equalled in Russian military annals. Even 
the stern Koutousov was moved at the sight of 
these glorious recruits reporting for duty long be- 
fore the time set for their arrival. When among 
the greybeards in their ranks he recognized com- 
rades-at-arms who had served with him in former 
campaigns, he called Platov from the head of his 
regiment and fell into his outstretched arms. While 
the two veterans mingled their tears of joy and 
reconciliation, fathers, sons and grandchildren 
toasted each other with boisterous Cossack cheer 
around the same bivouacs.* 

The delayed retreat of Napoleon's Grand Army 
which began soon after the events described now 
gave the Cossacks their terrible opportunity. Dur- 
ing the long stay in Moscow, the French troops had 
lost all discipline. Against their disordered flee- 
ing host, concerned only with reaching the Russian 
frontier, the Cossacks were able to drive home their 
continual, untiring attacks. To assist them in 
gathering the terrible harvest peasant bands sprang 
up everywhere. Even these undisciplined parti- 

* A. E. Tarasov, "The Hetman Platov." 



192 THE COSSACKS 

sans and such feeble troops as the veteran levies of 
the Don could now venture to measure their 
strength against the most famous regiments of 
Napoleon's guard. The English "Cossack" Wilson 
in his memoirs recounts a ghastly saying current in 
the Cossack ranks, "It is a shame to leave such 
skinny ghosts wandering about without their 
graves." 

Platov, restored once more to service with his 
old division, had singled out the corps commanded 
by the Viceroy of Italy as his special prey, troops 
which still courageously kept up a semblance of 
discipline. All day, through the driving snow, the 
fugitives saw far across the terrifying expanse of 
white plain about them, a long dark line following 
their march. Just out of musket shot, bands of 
Cossacks prowled awaiting nightfall. Around 
every bivouac their fitful sleep was haunted by a 
nightmare of Cossack pikes. To fall but a few 
paces behind the column meant a terrible death at 
the hands of outraged peasantry and their Cossack 
protectors. 

On October 28, near Rabouga, an attack in 
force was made by a Cossack flying column, and 
the long straggling line of fugitives, dragging it- 
self like a wounded snake across the steppes, was 
cut in two. The rear half, thus hopelessly cut off, 
tried to save itself by breaking up into little bands. 
Sixty-four cannon fell into the hands of the Cos- 
sacks. The greater part of these troops perished 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 193 

from cold on the steppes or were killed by the 
Cossacks. When the unfortunate Viceroy had 
taken refuge at Smolensk (without cavalry or 
transport and with only twelve cannon), Plato v, 
gathering fifteen regiments and all the Don artil- 
lery, next engaged Ney and the heroic rearguard, 
taking from the "Lion," as even his enemies called 
the famous marshal, 1300 prisoners and four 
cannon. 

At Kovno, where the enemy were at last driven 
from Russian soil, Ney and his rearguard made a 
final heroic stand. After another victory stub- 
bornly won, Platov and his Cossacks heard a Te 
Deum in the public square, the horsemen drawn up 
in grim and silent ranks, while the inhabitants 
knelt about them. Before the bells which rang out 
so joyfully in the cold air had ceased their pealing, 
the Cossacks swept beyond the frontier into 
"Europe."* 

History next notices Platov and his Cossacks 
preparing to take part in the attack on Danzig, still 
in the possession of Napoleon's German allies. The 
news that Frederick William of Prussia had finally 
summoned up courage to join the Alliance in the 
"Befreiungskrieg" caused the surrender of that 
place. On the road near Kalice, Platov was sent to 
meet the none too heroic Hohenzollern and soon 
after conducted him to the General Staff of Em- 

* The true Slav always refers to the land west of 
Russia in this way. 



194. THE COSSACKS 

peror Alexander, the real Liberator of Germany. 
At the famous "Battle of the Nations," fought at 
Leipzig in October, 1813, Platov received the Cross 
of St. Andrew. 

To reward his conduct during the engagement 
near Frankfort-on-Oder, there remained no higher 
honour to bestow upon the hetman. The thanks 
of his sovereign and a diamond aigrette to orna- 
ment his Cossack Tshapka were the only official 
means of recognizing the valor of his troops. It 
was, perhaps, fortunate that the war was drawing 
to a close ! 

The last warlike enterprise in which we h$ar of 
Platov and his Cossacks was their chivalrous at- 
tempt to rescue the captive Pope at Pontainebleau. 
But the unfortunate head of the Roman Church 
(dragged about together with the royal treasures 
of France in the wake of the fallen conqueror) 
had already left that place. Thus the strangest 
booty that could have fallen into the hands of the 
orthodox Cossacks of the Don escaped their well- 
meant efforts. 

Soon after the peace of Paris, Platov made his 
famous visit to London of which we have already 
had occasion to speak. The "hundred days" fol- 
lowing Napoleon's return from the island of Elba 
cost the veteran a last long ride across Europe to 
the battle of Waterloo. 

His next return to the now peaceful shores of the 
Don was, however, to be the last. For three years 



THE HETMAN PLATOV 195 

the tired veteran enjoyed unbroken rest and the 
inevitable reaction ensued. The steel springs of 
his energy uncoiled, and after a short illness due to 
a cold the Hetman Platov died peacefully in his bed 
in the year 1818. 



CHAPTER X 

THE COSSACKS OF TO-DAY: ORGANIZATION 
AND GOVERNMENT 

AT the close of the imperial regime, the term 
"Cossac k" was legally applied to a disti nct 
class or caste within the Russian state, dif feren - 
tiated by well-defined rights and duties from the 
ordinary subjects of the empire. For military 
reasons the Tsar's government fostered the clan 
spirit and esprit de corps which has always char- 
acterized the "Free People." 

To the North Russian peasant the Cossack 
troops were often associated with measures of po- 
lice and oppression. Historical reasons, as we have 
seen, have also played their part in separating the 
Cossack from the Moujik class — whose infinite 
docility the former have always regarded with con- 
tempt and aversion. Yet the distrust existing be- 
tween them and the "great gray mass" of the Rus- 
sian peasantry did not prevent the Cossacks from 
playing a notable role in the events which brought 
about the constructive revolution of 1917. 

The Cossacks are at present organized into 
eleven "armies," each occupying its own settle- 
ment or allotted territory. Their stanitzi, or set- 

196 




TO TEHERA 



PERSIA pTTORIES OF THE PRESEN T DAY. 

SKETCH ^AP OF THE PRINCIPAL COSSACK TER J^ AUTHORS ROUTE S&SfflS 
N -Z- 'URAL, Caszvekz igg ^t^£°^#"S 

MHH ORENBURG - EE= f^r/&^;^^r4^ 



TEREK 



'AN » 

■MlMIII 



i seMIrechensk 

-•++ SIBERIAN 



AMUR ^du^u^ o/ . theaey 

-r^rrH-or-ies along Ln*>" 



Territories 



Siberia- 




ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNMENT 197 

tlements, are generally distributed along the fron- 
tiers, old and new, of what was formerly the Em- 
pire of All the Russias. Officially these stanitzi 
were known as the territories of the Cossack armies 
of the Don, Ural, Terek, Kuban, Orenburg, As- 
trakhan, Trans-Baikal, Siberian, Siemriechinskoe 
(Seven Rivers), Amur and Ussuri. (See Map.) 
Thus with eveiy Cossack "army" or its subdivision 
was associated some definite grant of land to which 
) it was "territorially" attached. 

The Cossacks of the later "armies," formed for 
the purpose of patrolling and safeguarding the 
long frontiers of Russia's newly acquired Asiatic 
provinces, never enjoyed the same generous grants 
of land that were conferred upon the earlier sub- 
divisions, such as the Cossacks of the Kouban and 
Terek. 

On the other hand, the present territories of the 
Cossacks of the Don and Uralsk represent but a 
small portion of the huge "Free Steppes" over which 
their ancestors established their control. Indeed, 
the vague boundaries of these holdings were only 
"confirmed" when the advance of non-Cossack 
pioneers made such an act necessary. The polic y 
vigorously maintained by the imperial government 
was that of granting land in the neighbourhood of 
Cossack outposts only in return for military service. 
The system adopted — even during the closing 
years of the empire — did not differ materially 
from that employed by the early Tsars. Moreover, 



198 THE COSSACKS 

in order to foster the community spirit, all land 
ceded by the Russian crown to the different Cos- 
sack "armies" was to be held rigorously in common. 
This principle with certain modifications brought 
about by the passing of the "frontier conditions" 
(notably in the Don region) underlies the system 
of Cossack land tenure to the present day. Each 
adult male Cossack "soul" is entitled to the use 
of 30 dessiatines (about 75 acres) of agricultural 
land. These allotments may be re-distributed 
yearly, and the quantity increased, if local condi- 
tions (such as the quality of the land) make such 
a step desirable. The areas set aside for "military 
purposes" are used for forestry, and horsebreeding, 
and as a reserve for the future needs of the com- 
munity. 

Under the former imperial regime, the adminis- 
tration of the Cossack "armies" was placed di- 
rectly under the ministry of war, where a special 
"Chancellery" had charge of all matters affecting 
this class of citizens. A special "Committee of the 
Cossack armies" aided the Chancellery in its de- 
cisions, and all questions both of civil and military 
character were decided by these two organizations. 
While in theory elective, the members of this ad- 
visory committee were formerly in reality ap- 
pointed by the Minister of War. One of the first 
acts of the various Cossack congresses which rati- 
fied the change to a republican form of government 
was to provide for a popular and representative 



ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNMENT 199 

membership of this important body. The prin- 
cipal Cossack armies, viz.: Don, Uralsk, Terek, 
Kouban, Orenburg and Astrakhan, have each one 
permanent representative on this committee, while 
the smaller Cossack communities of Western and 
Eastern Siberia have each one delegate. 

The head of each "army" preserves the ancient 
title of ataman, an office usually uniting the mili- 
tary and civil duties of a governor-general. At 
the head of each stanitza — which usually com- 
prises from one to four villages according to the 
size of their population — is placed a stanitzi 
ataman, who is responsible for the general order. 
Out of respect for Cossack particularism, each 
stanitza in theory became an administrative unit 
enjoying the fullest autonomy. 

The actual government in most of these com- 
munities is generally exercised by a council of 
Cossack elders, generally men past military age, 
whose patriarchal decisions are respected by all. 
This council or sbor is responsible to a stanitza 
gathering in which all the Cossack heads of families 
are represented. In view, however, of the in- 
creasing population and the unwieldy proportions 
which these gatherings attained in many of the 
larger stanitzi the old principle of the obshi kroug, 
i.e., the "Circle of All," is generally limited to 
communities not exceeding twenty or thirty fam- 
ilies. In the larger communities a representative 
system has been adopted based on the universal 



200 THE COSSACKS 

suffrage of men over twenty-five years of age. De- 
cisions must be reached in all important affairs by 
the vote of at least a two-thirds majority. 

In the Cossack stanitzi non-Cossacks, or "persons 
not of the military class," are permitted to live on 
the payment of certain dues to the community, 
but without the right to vote or hold office. (Jews 
were formerly rigorously excluded from the enjoy- 
ment of this privilege.) 

Cossacks have the same fondness for cattle 
raising and other pastoral pursuits noticeable in the 
inhabitants of nearly all new countries. Like the 
true "cowboy" of the Far West — with whom he 
has much in common — the Cossack will only put 
his hand to the plow when driven to it by the 
sternest necessity. Although in many parts of the 
Cossack country the soil of the steppes is surpass- 
ingly rich, the rigours of a continental climate are 
felt with especial severity. In these vast almost 
treeless plains droughts, floods and other climatic 
extremes are enemies of the Cossack husbandmen. 

Under the imperial government the breeding of 
horses and cattle was especially encouraged in order 
to furnish mounts for the cavalry, and to ensure 
the best results the Ministry of Agriculture pro- 
vided the Cossack herders with blooded stock. 
Breeding farms are established for the direction 
and supervision of this industry at convenient 
points. 

Besides horses a great part of the wealth of the 



ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNMENT 201 

Cossack nations consists in their herds of cattle, 
sheep, swine, and camels. Indeed in many parts 
of the stanitzi the size of these herds forms the chief 
criterion of Cossack wealth and position, much in 
the same way that this standard is applied among 
nomad races. 

The old tradition that pictures the Cossack 
troops as a levy of wild horsemen, only useful for 
the purpose of partisan warfare, in no way rep- 
resents the actual state of their military capabilities. 
Besides living from childhood in a military atmos- 
phere their officers are drilled with especial severity 
for their long period of duty. Under the old re- 
gime, while special military institutions existed for 
Cossack officers, they were subjected to the same 
educational requirements as the cadets graduating 
from regular military schools. Moreover, no 
amount of training could take the place of the 
marvellous esprit de corps — an almost instinctive 
"clan" feeling — existing in every Cossack regi- 
ment. 

The introduction of universal military service 
in 1874, and the enactment of laws by which every 
male Russian was called upon to take up his share 
in the burden of state defence, removed many of 
the differences existing between the Cossacks and 
their peasant or moujik neighbours. But in spite of 
the important change thus realized the military tra- 
ditions of the Cossack race remained unchanged 
and the imperial government continued to treat 



202 THE COSSACKS 

them as a distinct body in the community. Each 
Cossack was still required to furnish his own horse, 
uniform and weapons, and the only changes made 
in the old conditions of Cossack service had in view 
placing the Cossack armies in a position enabling 
them to co-operate with the regular troops of the 
Russian line.* 

Nearly all the Cossack troops engaged in the 
heroic struggle which the Russian army made on 
the side of the Allies during the opening years of 
the World War, were cavalry formations. The 
levy of the united Cossack armies just before the 
war constituted a minimum of 144 cavalry regi- 
ments, 830 sotnia or "hundreds" and a quota of 
light Cossack artillery, accompanying the infantry 
divisions. As Cossack cavalry drill included a 
certain training in infantry tactics, their services 
were useful even in trench warfare, but it was as 
scouts and raiders that the traditional Cossack 
qualities gained for these troops such well-deserved 
reputation. 

For military purposes all male Cossacks are di- 
vided into two general categories, active and re- 

* While many of the most famous Cossack regiments 
wear a uniform which differs little from those of the 
Russian dragoon regiments, the more characteristic Cos- 
sack military dress is an adaptation of the Circassian 
tcherkesJca — the convenient martial costume of the un- 
conquerable Mussulman Tcherkess tribesmen who inhabit 
part of the Caucasus. 



ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNMENT 203 

serve. The active category is again divided into 
three divisions : 

(1) Preparatory, composed of Cossacks and 
cadets undergoing military instruction. 

(2) Line Cossacks. 

(3) Depot or reserve for the second division. 
Cossack military service begins at eighteen years 

and is continued as follows : three years in the pre- 
paratory class ; twelve years in the line ; five years in 
the reserve. The "line" category, in view of the 
long service required, is divided into three divisions, 
only the first of which serves constantly with the col- 
ours, while the other two are allowed to remain near 
their homes subject to "the call to arms." (See 
Russian Encyclopedia, article by A. Saroff.) 

With the negligible exception of twenty in- 
fantry "hundreds" and a greatly reduced quota 
of light Cossack artillery, nearly all the Cossack 
troops serve as cavalry, or "dismounted cavalry."* 

In addition to the regular Cossack troops the 
imperial armies included a division of cavalry, 
armed and drilled according to Cossack methods, 
but exclusively recruited among the war-like tribes 
of the Tcherkess, Abkhazes, Lesghians, Daghes- 
tani, etc. These wild horsemen, who compose the 
celebrated "Dikki Division" or "Wild Division," 
enjoy not only a great reputation for reckless 

* The above figures are based upon widely differing 
data furnished by the usual "official sources" before the 
revolution. They are given with the greatest reserve. 



204 THE COSSACKS 

bravery but also for the excesses which they are 
reputed to commit in enemy territory. Few, if 
any, of these troops are Cossacks, and only the sim- 
ilarity of dress and equipment causes them to be 
confused with the latter. On the other hand a bit- 
ter rivalry exists between them and the true Cos- 
sack troops against whom their ancestors were so 
long engaged in frontier feuds and skirmishes. 
(This is the division which General Kornilov was 
reported to be leading in his much misunderstood 
movement against the former Provisional Govern- 
ment. ) 

The Cossack divisions preserved their discipline 
to the last during the terrible moments when Bol- 
shevik propaganda was successfully sowing dis- 
order in the Russian lines. As noted elsewhere, 
the Cossack regiments everywhere gave their sup- 
port to the changes brought about by the construc- 
tive revolution of March 1917 (conducted along 
lines so acceptable to the traditions of the "Free 
People") . By keeping intact military organization 
most of the Cossack regiments were able then to 
reach their own territory during the horrors of the 
Bolshevik demobilization. They thus escaped the 
lot of so many wretched peasant soldiers of the old 
regime, who found it necessary to enlist in the 
ragged regiments of the Red Guards in order to 
keep body and soul together. When the Bolshevik 
directorate, which had replaced the officialdom of 
the old regime at Petrograd, sought to obtain Cos- 



ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNMENT 205 

sack support, they found the Cossack territories 
organized, not only to conduct their own affairs, 
but also to resist dictation from without. 

It is perhaps premature to consider here the 
problem of the place which the Cossacks will oc- 
cupy in relation to the rest of "What was Russia." 
When the ominous symbol of the red flag every- 
where replaced the national standard throughout 
Northern Russia — through the teachings of ma- 
terialistic Socialist doctrines — "class conscious- 
ness" took the place of patriotic ideals. The blue 
and yellow flag of the old Cossack Ukraine imme- 
diately appeared in the south, an unmistakable 
answer to these denationalizing influences. The 
ideal maintained in all the Cossack territories is 
that of a Russian federal republic, wherein a large 
measure of autonomy will be allowed the widely dif- 
fering peoples and districts who were "gathered 
together" by the long imperialistic process of the 
old regime. The opposition of the Bolsheviki at 
Petrograd to this logical desire for decentralization, 
and the eagerness with which Lenine and his asso- 
ciates seized upon the machinery and methods of 
Tsardom for their own form of "government," 
will probably for some time form an obstacle to 
any close union between north and south. Here 
again, however, geographical factors, notably the 
absence of any natural frontiers separating the 
older provinces of "Muscovy" from "New Russia," 
will be a force making for future reunion. 



206 THE COSSACKS 

At a time when Russia is distracted by the at- 
tempts of doctrinaires to solve the vast problems of 
land tenure left by the collapse of the imperial re- 
gime, it is interesting to consider the present situ- 
ation of the Cossack land holder. The stanitzi rep- 
resent a system of communal ownership developed 
by practical experience and adjustment through a 
long period of time, and thoroughly adapted to the 
needs of the Cossack community. Unlike the 
grinding tyranny of the mir — the primitive 
communal system under which the Russian 
peasants of the north sought to administer their 
own affairs — the Cossack system has been able to 
give wide latitude to individual effort, and even to 
adapt itself to the passing of frontier conditions by 
frankly admitting the right to private ownership. 
Thus land (such as orchard and homestead land) 
where permanent improvements have been made 
through the owner's own outlay of work or capital 
becomes, with certain restrictions, private prop- 
erty. It is, therefore, easy to understand why 
Bolshevik propaganda has met with so little suc- 
cess, not only among the peasant proprietors of 
the Ukraine, where Cossack civilization ceased to 
exist many years ago, but also in the newer Cos- 
sack territories, of the "armies" established during 
the last century along the eastern frontiers of New 
Russia. In spite of the infiltration of landless 
peasants from the North among the Cossack set- 
tlements, the doctrines of Marxian Socialism have 



ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNMENT 207 

generally met with a hostile reception throughout 
the Cossack territories. 

The situation was well set forth in the homely- 
language of a delegate of the Uralsk Cossacks to 
the Cossack congress in Petrograd: "The Cos- 
sacks — or Tree People' — of Russia have not 
maintained their liberty and manhood during these 
centuries of crushing autocratic tyranny without 
learning how to preserve their own liberties in their 
own fashion. The spectacle afforded us by the 
prophets of a Socialistic cult imported from Ger- 
many and preached by an alien race is enough to 
disgust any lover of freedom, to whatever nation 
he may belong. It seems to be forgotten in cer- 
tain parts of Russia that in the organization and 
administration of our hasah lands we have our- 
selves developed what may be called the only prac- 
tical system of community life to be found in ac- 
tual operation anywhere on the world's surface. 

"We, therefore, demand, and feel ourselves 
more than ever prepared to insist upon, the main- 
tenance under a democratic order of the privilege 
to manage our own affairs — a privilege which 
could not be withheld from us under a tyrannical 
autocracy. This can only be secured, we feel cer- 
tain, through a regime of complete local autonomy 
embracing all the widely differing provinces of the 
old empire. The geographical character of the 
Russian empire clearly indicates what form of gov- 
ernment should there exist. This should be similar 



208 THE COSSACKS 

to that prevailing in the United States: a federal 
republic, wherein the Cossack territories, our old 
neighbours of the Ukraine and the regions of North 
Russia, will all find their place, and freedom to 
live their own lives according to their own tradi- 
tions and aspirations." 



CHAPTER XI 

THE COSSACKS OF TO-DAY: THE DON 

ONE might seek in vain to-day in many parts 
of the old Cossack Ukraine for traces of its 
former masters. Although a modern statue of 
Bogdan Hmelnicky stands in the public square of 
Kiev, the Cossack element of the old border cap- 
ital may be said to have almost disappeared. Yet 
throughout all the vast territory of South Russia, 
the traditions of the days of Cossack ascendency 
are still a precious heritage. The descendants of 
the Freemen inscribed on the old military registers, 
and the "little proprietor" or obnodvortzi of 
Kharkov and Poltava, feels himself the equal of 
the former great landlords of Northern Russia. 
Even the none too reputable memories of the 
"heroes" of the later sitch — the license and dis- 
orderly existence of the Zaporogian Brotherhood 
— are proudly recalled on account of the de- 
votion to the principles of personal liberty which 
kept alive the spark of free manhood in the face 
of a Russia sunk in serfdom. 

Although the plains of the Ukraine about Kiev 
and Kharkov have long since been abandoned by 
the "Free People" — and the wild riders of the 

209 



210 THE COSSACKS 

steppes have disappeared in a cloud of dust and 
a scamper of hoofs towards the more congenial 
frontiers of Asiatic Russia — their spirit remains 
alive in the individualistic and independent peas- 
ant landholders of Little Russia. 

Any description of the "old Cossack" country of 
South Russia, notably the provinces of the Don, 
must first take into account the geographical in- 
fluences of the great steppes upon the development 
of this typical civilization. 

The great prairies of wild grass have given way 
to far-stretching wheat fields, and the Cossack 
stanitzi have been replaced by the villages of South 
Russian peasants. Nevertheless conditions pe- 
culiar to the Black Sea littoral still give a charac- 
teristic note to the scenery. Travellers of every 
race and country have exhausted their vocabulary 
in trying to convey some idea of the effect made 
upon the observer by the ceaseless uniformity of 
this landscape. The reader will, therefore, be 
spared a repetition of these descriptions and asked 
instead to consider the more cheerful side of the 
subject — the enormous agricultural possibilities 
and the stores of natural wealth which in many 
places underlie these plains. 

For in spite of their monotony when viewed 
from the standpoint of scenery the steppes of Little 
Russia are perhaps the richest agricultural region 
in the world. Their fertility is due to the famous 
tsherno zemli or "black earth" which covers the un- 



THE DON 211 

derlying strata for more than a yard in thickness 
— a deposit which except for certain sandy 
stretches, extends over nearly the entire southern 
portion of Russia from the Dnieper to the Caspian. 
In many places the name popularly given this rich 
soil is no exaggeration, for when newly turned by 
the plow it is almost as black as coal. The compo- 
sition of this natural garden soil is due to a century- 
long process. Layers of decaying vegetation are 
deposited by the natural crop of grasses with 
which these plains are covered every season when 
left uncultivated. The Russian peasant firmly be- 
lieves that even without manure or artificial fer- 
tilizer the richness of this land is inexhaustible. In 
many parts scientific investigation seems to bear 
out his contention that manures are not only su- 
perfluous, but detrimental. By plowing to a depth 
of only six inches the black earth is capable of 
giving phenomenal crops for five or six years in 
succession after which if allowed to lie fallow dur- 
ing a few seasons all its fertility appears to return. 
It is this natural richness of soil which has 
brought about the dangerously improvident forms 
of agriculture to which the Cossack farmer is 
wedded. Indeed, his inability to compete with more 
skillful farmers from less fertile localities lies at the 
bottom of his slow expropriation by the latter when- 
ever they meet in open competition. If fertility 
were the only question to be considered in the black 
earth region, the plains of South Russia would be 



212 THE COSSACKS 

an agricultural paradise and the Cossacks and 
peasants inhabiting them the happiest of men. Un- 
fortunately, however, these vast plains are the 
scene of such sudden and violent changes of weather 
that no human ingenuity may forestall their effect. 
So powerful are the rays of the southern sun that 
disastrous droughts frequently result from a sea- 
sonable rainfall deferred but for a few days. 
Again, under normal winter conditions these plains 
are covered by snow for five months of the year, 
forming a necessary protection against the biting 
frost which otherwise destroys the autumn sowing. 
But in many parts of the "black earth" region 
(notably towards the east) the violent winds of 
winter blow unchecked by hill or forest, carrying 
away the snowy covering, thereby allowing the soil 
to freeze sometimes to a depth of a yard or more. 
In such cases the whole process of sowing must be 
begun over again in the spring. The preference of 
the Cossack "old-timer" for cattle raising and 
breeding, even on such fertile pasturage, is there- 
fore readily to be understood. 

In the face of great natural forces wholly be- 
yond his control, fatalism and faith in the omnipo- 
tence of a higher power are outstanding charac- 
teristics of the Cossack farmer. These qualities 
carried beyond a certain point are, however, curi- 
ously liable to resemble indolence and improvi- 
dence. Moreover, these faults are especially dan- 
gerous when they do not carry with them the in- 



THE DON 213 

evitable punishment meted out to men of northern 
climes. The recent development of the coal and 
iron fields underlying the agricultural riches of 
South Russia have done much to change the char- 
acter of the country and its inhabitants. 

The journey from Kiev to Kharkov lies through 
a classic land of old Cossack history and romance. 
Yet there is little to remind one of this vanished 
civilization until the shores of the Don are reached. 
The contrast between Kiev — its pious silhouette 
of domes and convent towers rising from the plains 
of the Dnieper — and Kharkov, the commercial 
and industrial center of South Russia, is wholly 
significant of the changes which have overtaken all 
the western Cossack steppes. Once a mere Cos- 
sack settlement, Kharkov lies at the apex of the 
triangle formed by the great industrial region of 
South Russia, the Krivoi-Rog. Thus, the iron 
fields to the north of the Dnieper and the relatively 
new industrial enterprises of the Donetz coal basin 
are at its doors. Here center the three essential 
elements of a modern commercial and industrial 
El Dorado, i.e., coal, iron and population. 

The country in which these rich deposits are 
found, instead of presenting the barren and unat- 
tractive landscape so often associated with mining 
districts, is covered with wheat-fields and pasture 
lands. Here it is no uncommon spectacle to see 
great factories and work shops trailing their plumes 
of black bituminous smoke across acres of ripening 



214 THE COSSACKS 

grain — cultivation of which ends only at the foot 
of their dingy walls. 

No wonder that an unconquerable optimism — 
the true American "western spirit" — pervades the 
population of these favoured lands. In the clear 
air and flooding sunlight of the old steppes the 
northern Russian peasant nature expands with re- 
newed activity. The strong force of "passive re- 
sistance," so characteristic of the fatalistic North- 
Slav civilization, is transformed into a source of 
boundless physical energy. Even the great work- 
shops and foundries set down among the smiling 
landscape of fields and orchards lose much of the 
grim enslaving aspect which characterize the roar- 
ing mills of the commercial quarters of Petrograd 
and Moscow. In the promised land of the old Cos- 
sack "Republic of the Don" a new commercial pro- 
letariat is arising — a new race of workers who 
seem to have absorbed some of the sturdy tradi- 
tions of freedom of the early inhabitants. 

Kharkov is a city of about 200,000 inhabitants. 
The ancient architectural features of the old 
Ukranian capital have all but disappeared. German 
influence is evident on every hand. A hideous 
Lutheran Church of raw red brick raises its towers 
next to the bulbous cupolas of the Russian cathe- 
dral, while long streets are lined with houses and 
shops in the "modern style" of Munich and 
Carlsruhe. Indeed, the threat of German com- 
mercial domination was the direct cause of the early 



THE DON 215 

revolutionary movements which broke out in Khar- 
kov in 1917. Another reason for this hostile at- 
titude to the German influence at Petrograd lay in 
the fact that Kharkov had a large population of 
Poles from German Poland, who had settled here 
in the freer commercial atmosphere of Russia. 

A few hours ride beyond Kharkov brings the 
traveller to the first stanitzi of the Don Cossacks. 
The first view of these villages shows them to be- 
long to a different civilization. Comparison with 
the settlements of the moujik workmen who have 
invaded their territory since the opening of the 
great modern factories of the Donetz makes this 
contrast the more remarkable. For the moujikj 
even in new surroundings, long remains true to 
type. 

Even where there is little to prevent their villages 
from spreading at their ease across the steppes, 
atavism, or love of each other's company, keeps 
them crowded about the great red-brick factory 
buildings, in much the same way that their an- 
cestors huddled about the fortresses of their over- 
lords in the Tartar-raided pinewoods of the north. 

The villages inhabited by the true natives of the 
soil present a far different appearance. The first 
view of the Cossack stanitza shows that their inhabi- 
tants take interest not only in the outer appearances, 
but also concerning questions of cleanliness and 
sanitation. Another significant fact: schoolhouses 
begin to appear beside the churches. Each neat 



216 THE COSSACKS 

fenced garden is of precisely the dimensions pre- 
scribed by its owner's military rank in the Cossack 
polk. Even the favourite sunflowers of Little Rus- 
sia, which stand sentinel about every modest door- 
way, seem to have been manoeuvred into place at 
the drillmaster's command. 

Orchards whose boughs are nearly breaking with 
their weight of fruit, and an occasional vineyard 
producing the heady Cossack wine, show the suita- 
bility of this rich steppe land for any kind of agri- 
culture. There is, however, another side to the 
picture. Often for miles at a stretch, the land lies 
fallow or is left in luxurious pasture for herds of 
cattle, sheep and sturdy little Cossack horses, 
among whom occasionally appears the gaunt apoc- 
alyptic silhouette of a camel mother and her 
ungainly offspring. Now and again the sight of a 
wheat-field stretching in its broad shimmering ex- 
panse to a misty horizon gives an insight into the 
true agricultural possibilities of the Don country, 
but this latter method of farming "wholesale," re- 
minding one of America or the Canadian provinces 
of the West, is in no way indigenous to the soil. 
Even the implements used in this form of hus- 
bandry are American, or the cheaper and flimsier 
German imitation of American models. Cossack 
capital is often interested in the development of 
these grain-lands, yet even the well-to-do Cossack 
proprietor still infinitely prefers to do his farming 
by hand. The owner of many such broad acres is 



THE DON 217 

more likely to be found hoeing the garden before 
his own door, or, better still, if his wealth permits, 
he likes to ride about among his patriarchal flocks 
and herds. The exploitation of his steppe heritage 
he leaves to the more mechanically minded farmer 
of an alien race. Thus the richest profits of the 
"black earth" belt are garnered by North Russian 
moujiks, or even Tartars or Armenians, rather 
than by the native Donskoi. 

An adjustment of relations between the Cossack 
proprietors and the non-Cossack emigrants now 
tilling the vast tracts of fertile territory owned in 
common by the "armies" is one of the most impor- 
tant problems that the future has in store. Whether 
the land-hungry peasants, who are the lessees of so 
much of the best Cossack agricultural land, will, 
with the spread of modern ideas, consent to remain 
in the relation of tenants towards the community 
appears highly doubtful. 

In the past the rich "black earth" region of 
the Don and the great coalfields which underlie the 
old "free steppes" of the Donetz were a greater 
menace to Cossack institutions than all the at- 
tempts of the Russian Tsars to curtail their lib- 
erties. The general distaste for trade and industry 
characterizing the Cossack of the classical days is 
shared by his descendants. Nearly all mercantile 
enterprises in the larger towns are in the hands of 
"strangers." Already a foreign merchant class is 
growing up among the stanit?d under the present 



218 THE COSSACKS 

policy of toleration. Armenians and Jews are 
obtaining control of nearly all the retail business in 
the neighbourhood of Rostov, and even in the last 
stronghold of Cossack conservatism — Novotcher- 
kask. Yet, in spite of these signs of the changing 
times the Cossack still remains to a surprising de- 
gree the master in his own house. 

The old Cossack communal system, while fre- 
quently modified by alien changes, has, in point of 
fact, prospered exceedingly through this peaceful 
invasion. A definite share in the increment earned 
falls to nearly every member of the stanitza. 
Thanks to the conservative workings of Russian 
law the proprietor is as hard to expropriate as the 
traditional limpet. This many a promoter of mod- 
ern, if dubious, prosperity discovered to his cost. 
With respect to every new project proposed the 
Cossack officials and elders must have their say, 
and a spirit of healthy conservatism prevails in 
their councils. 

Even the first glimpse of NWoJcherkask, the 
Cossack capital, will show that here, at least, the 
old ways are still followed. The streets, though 
wide and tree-bordered, are often so steep that only 
a horseman may safely negotiate the grade. On 
the crest of the highest hill rises the cathedral, a 
warlike little shrine set about with cannon and other 
trophies captured from the Turks and English dur- 
ing the Crimean war. In a narrow space of flat 
ground in front of the sbor stands a fine statue of 



THE DON 219 

the famous hetman Yermak, the embodiment of 
Cossack genius, who first conquered Siberia for the 
Russian empire in the days of Ivan the Terrible. 
All about the Cathedral are built the great barracks 
and other military dependencies, while even the 
private houses clearly indicate the military rank 
rather than the wealth of their owners. 

The little museum, which stands near by, is a 
veritable Acropolis for the whole Donskoi race and 
the treasures it contains are proudly exhibited to 
the rare visitor: crudely carved Scythian idols 
are reminders of the primitive Lords of the Steppes, 
beautifully chiselled Greek coffins tell of the early 
commercial colonies established on the Black 
Sea littoral; marble slabs bearing long inscriptions 
in Latin record a succeeding influence — that of 
the Genoese merchant-lords who formerly occupied 
strategic points on the great "Highway of the Na- 
tions." 

Next to these remains, showing the commercial 
importance of the Don basin in ancient times, are 
piously preserved the regalia, half-Tartar, half- 
Christian, of the old Cossack chieftains and ata- 
mans of the Don: horsetail standards, copied from 
those carried before the Asiatic khans when they 
went to war; the heavy silver-gilt boundchouks, or 
war-clubs, formerly the insignia of office, carried 
by the hetman; icons and Cossack standards em- 
broidered with the pictures of wonder-working 
saints and martyrs of the Ukraine, who accom- 



220 THE COSSACKS 

panied the wild chivalry of the Don in their wars 
against the Tartars.* 

There is also preserved in the museum a me- 
mento of Empress Catherine's famous journey 
through the newly conquered provinces of Southern 
Russia. It was from the window of a travelling 
vehicle (which she presented to the Donskoi) that 
she gazed upon the carnivalesque villages which the 
zeal of her favourite Potemkin caused to be erected 
all along the route followed by the imperial cortege 
in its journey across the empty Cossack steppes. 
The boisterous welcome of the Cossack stanitzi of 
the Don — a contrast to the theatrical rejoicings of 
the fictitious peasants and bayaderes of Potemkin's 
improvised population — seems to have pleased the 
august sovereign, who showed them the most gra- 
cious side of her character. The Donskoi, in turn, 
elected her an "honorary Cossack" and still cherish 
the memory of "Mother Catherine's" vis s it to their 
capital. 

In the library of the museum are carefully pre- 
served the charters and other documents attesting 
the privileges conferred upon the Donskoi race by 

* Another interesting relic is a finely jewelled sword 
presented by the "Merchants of the City of London" 
(in recognition of the services the Cossacks rendered to 
the cause of the Grand Alliance of a century ago against 
the imperialistic "welt-politik" of Napoleon) to the fa- 
mous hetman Platov, a native of old Tcherkask, and one 
of the founders of the present city. 




KOUBAN COSSACKS 

And "Cossacks" of the "Wild Division' 



THE DON 221 

succeeding Tsars, each confirming the "rights" 
which the valour of the Cossack armies obtained at 
the hands of the Russian autocrats. 

Novotcherkask is the centre of the Cossack edu- 
cational system. It boasts of a large institution, the 
"Academy," whose faculty was famous all over 
Russia for the sturdy independence of its teachings. 
The Cossack school system was liberally endowed 
and illiteracy is lower in the Don stanitzi than in 
any province of the old empire. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE FRONTIERS OF EUROPE 

LESS than a century ago no traveller would 
have dreamed of crossing the river Don with- 
out a strong escort of Russian troops — unless 
journeying as the guest of some Cossack chieftain 
or hetman of the "Cossacks of the Black Sea." Con- 
cerning this wild country the Englishman Clarke 
wrote in his celebrated "Travels in the Ukraine" as 
follows: "Here one finds the Cossack race still 
living according to the manners and customs of 
their ancestors. A savage pride in their complete 
independence is reflected in their dress and manner 
of existence. Each Cossack is the equal of every 
other member of the community, whether clad in 
simple sheep-skins and dwelling in a cave, or in- 
habiting a fine well-built house and dressed in 
velvet covered with gold and silver lace." And 
until the coming of the great trunk line connecting 
the "Petroleum-Metropolis" of Bakou on the Cas- 
pian Sea with Rostov-on-Don,* these primitive 
frontier conditions were to be found existing over 
all the fertile steppes to the north of the Caucasus. 

* Rostov-on-Don is a busy young commercial city — 
the port and distributing centre for the Don region. It 

222 



THE FRONTIERS OF EUROPE 223 

These low-lying plains — the watershed of the 
Kuban and Terek — were formerly the bed of a 
great sea or strait connecting the Caspian with the 
Black Sea. Overlying a sandy substratum filled 
with the debris of shells and marine life is spread a 
generous layer of the famous agricultural soil 
known as "the black earth,' , the foundation of the 
agricultural empire of South Russia. The bur- 
ial mounds of forgotten races, huge Kourgans, 
sometimes still surmounted by rudely carved 
guardian deities of stone, alone break the flat hor- 
izon. These are relics of the Scythian tribes who 
formerly pastured their flocks on the rich grass that 
covered these plains. Their numbers show that a 
numerous population, even in pre-historic times, oc- 
cupied this favored territory. 

About the growing modern city of Ekaterinodar, 
or "Catherine's gift" — another reminder of the 
famous visit which that great Russian ruler made 
to her Cossack territories in South Russia — lies 
the province where the famous Zaporogian Cos- 
sacks were formerly granted lands in order to pro- 
tect the new frontiers from the inroads of the 
Tcherkess (Circassians) and other wild mountain 
tribes of the Caucasus. No encouragement was 
given these emigrants from the shores of the Dnie- 
per to resume the peculiar organization of their 

has, however, lost all Cossack character, and its popu- 
lation is principally made up of Armenians, Jews, Great- 
Russians and other "strangers." ) 



224 THE COSSACKS 

sitch, the armed camp or stronghold whence they 
formerly set at defiance not only the authority of 
the Turks and Tartars, but also (when it so pleased 
their humour) the commands of the Russian Tsars 
as well. At the present day the descendants of the 
"Free Companions" differ little from other Cossack 
communities of the Russian frontier. The enter- 
prise and energy which characterized their forbears 
is now exercised along wholly peaceful lines. 
Foreign agricultural machines are sold in all the 
principal shops of Ekaterinodar. The spectacle 
afforded by a bewhiskered Cossack armed with the 
inevitable dagger, peacefully bestriding an Ameri- 
can mowing machine — is wholly typical of the 
"new days." Bee culture, a traditional occupation 
of the steppes, where the wildflowers give honey of 
especially agreeable flavour, is another vocation car- 
ried on with success by these descendants of the 
redoubtable pirates of the Lower Dnieper. In the 
sandier parts of the plains cattle and sheep raising 
(pastoral pursuits in which the Cossack population 
excel) are the principal source of the wealth of 
these fortunate "Cossacks of the Kuban/' 



Along the foothills of the great Caucasian walls, 

where the Terek flows through flat, sandy plains to 

the Caspian Sea, lies the territory of the "Cossack 

^ Army of the Terek." To the north lies a salt 

desert inhabited only by nomad Buddhist Kal- 



THE FRONTIERS OF EUROPE 225 

moucks — so isolated by their inhospitable sur- 
roundings that they are able to continue the primi- 
tive existence of their forefathers within a few hun- 
dred versts — as the crow flies — of Russian civili- 
zation. These are generally peaceably disposed, but 
in the mountains to the south of the Terek in the 
highland fastness of Kabardia and Daghestan 
dwell Mussulman tribes whose independent spirit 
is a continual source of petty disorder. Here, in a 
veritable natural fortress, the Caucasian hero 
Schamyl and his followers made their last heroic 
stand against the Russian forces but half a century 
ago. 

In the isolated valleys, unvisited except by that 
unwelcome fellow brigand, the Russian tax-gath- 
erer, Schamyl's descendants have maintained their 
tribal customs to the present day. On these the Cos- 
sack stanitzi still keep careful watch, for now and 
again some local Robin Hood ventures to exercise 
the old tribal right to exact an involuntary toll on 
the Russian post roads.* 

In Tolstoi's splendid story, "The Cossack," is 
found the following description from the Russian 
view-point of the old Grebenski stanitzi,, of whom 
the present-day Cossacks of the Kuban and Terek 
are the successors : 

* But a few months before the writer's last visit 
to Vladikavkas, a noted outlaw had been hunted down 
by the Terek Cossacks. I talked with several people who 
had seen this popular hero's body brought into the city, 



226 THE COSSACKS 

"The whole line of the Terek along which, for 
some eighty versts, are scattered the stanitzi, or 
villages of the Grebensky Cossacks, has a dis- 
tinctive character, by reason not only of its situa- 
tion, but also of population. The river Terek, which 
separates the Cossacks from the mountaineers, 
flows turbid and swift, but still in a broad and tran- 
quil current, constantly depositing gray silt on the 
low, reed-grown right bank, and undermining the 
steep but not lofty left bank, with its tangled roots 
of century-old oaks, decaying plane trees, and un- 
s y derbrush. O n th e right bank lie auls, or native 
villages, peaceable but restless ; along the left bank, 
half a verst from the river, and seven or eight versts 
apart, stretch the Cossack villages. In former 
times, the majority of these villages or outposts 
were on the very edge of the river; but the Terek 
each year, sweeping farther away from the moun- 
tains toward the north, has kept undermining them, 
and now there remain in sight only the old ruins, 
gardens, pear trees, poplars, and limes, thickly 
overgrown, and twined about with blackberries and 
wild grape-vines. No one any longer lives there, 
and the only signs of life are the tracks on the sand, 
made by deer, wolves, hares, and pheasants, which 
haunt such places. 

A road runs from stanitza to stanitza, through 
the forest, as a cannon-shot would fly. Along the 
road are the military stations or cordons, guarded 
by Cossacks. Between the cordons are watch- 
accompanied by his weeping relations and the tribesmen 
who refused to abandon their feudal chief, even in death. 
These had become voluntary captives upon hearing the 
news of his untimely end. 



THE FRONTIERS OF EUROPE 227 

towers with sentinels. Only a narrow strip of 
fertile forest land — say twenty-one hundred feet 
wide — constitutes the Cossacks' domain. On the 
north begin the sandy dunes of the Nogai, or Moz- 
dok steppe, stretching far away, and commingling, 
God knows where, with the Trukhmensky, Astra- 
khan, and Kirgiz-Kaisak steppes. On the south, 
beyond the Terek, is the Great Chechnya, the ridge 
of the Kotchkalosof range, the Black Mountains, 
then still another sierra, and finally the Snowy 
Mountains, which are visible, indeed, but which 
have never yet been trodden by the foot of man. 
On the fertile strip of forest land, rich in all kinds 
of vegetation, have lived, since immemorial times, 
a warlike, handsome, and wealthy Russian popula- 
tion, professing the "Old Faith," and called the 
Grebensky Kazaki or Border Cossacks. 

Very, very long ago, their ancestors, the Staro- 
vyerni, or "Old Believers," fled from Russia and 
settled beyond the Terek among the Chechens on 
the ridge — "Greben" — or first spur of the 
wooded range of the Great Chechnya. These Cos- 
sacks intermarried with their new neighbours, the 
Chechens, and adopted the habits, mode of life, and 
manners of the mountaineers; but they succeeded 
in maintaining even there the Russian language and 
the old belief in their pristine purity. A tradition, 
still preserved among these Cossacks, declares that 
the Tsar Ivan the Terrible came to the Terek, in- 
vited the elders of the Cossacks from the Ridge to 
meet him, gave them the land on that side of the 
river, charged them to live in peace, and promised 
not to compel them either to subjection or to a 
change of belief. 

From that time to this the Cossack families have 



228 THE COSSACKS 

kept up their relations with the mountaineers, and 
the chief traits of their character are love of liberty, 
laziness, brigandage, and war. The influence of 
Russia has been exerted only in a detrimental way, 
by forced conscriptions, the removal of their bells, 
and the presence of troops quartered among them. 
The Cossack is inclined to have less detestation for 
the mountaineer-jig^ who has killed his brother 
than for the soldier who is quartered on him for the 
sake of protecting his village, but who scents up 
his hut with tobacco-smoke. He respects his moun- 
tain enemy; but he disdains the soldier, whom he 
regards as an alien oppressor. 

In the eyes of the Cossack the Russian peasant is 
a nondescript creature, uncouth and beneath con- 
tempt, the type of which he finds in the peripatetic 
Little Russian peddler or emigrant, called by the 
Cossacks shapoval y or tile-wearer. 

The height of style there is to dress like the 
Tcherkess. His best weapons are procured from 
the mountaineers ; from them also his best horses are 
bought or stolen. The young Cossack brave prides 
himself on his knowledge of the Tartar language, 
and, when he is on a drunken spree, he speaks 
Tartar even with his brother. 

In fact this petty population of Christians, bar- 
ricaded in a little corner of the world, surrounded 
by semi-civilized Mohammedan tribes and by sol- 
diers, regards itself as having attained the highest 
degree of culture, looks on the Cossack as alone 
worthy of the name of man, and affects to despise 
every one else. The Cossack spends the most of 
his time at the cordons, in expeditions, hunting and 
fishing. He almost never works at home. His 
presence in his stamtza is an exception to the rule, 



THE FRONTIERS OF EUROPE 229 

but when he is there he lounges. Wine is a common 
commodity among all the Cossacks, and drunken- 
ness is not so much a universal propensity as it is 
a rite, the non-fulfilment of which would be re- 
garded as apostasy. 

The Cossack looks on a woman as the instrument 
of his well-being. Only while she is unmarried does 
he allow her to be idle and make merry; but when 
she is once a wife he compels her to work for him 
from youth to the very end of old age. He is thor- 
oughly Oriental in his demand on her obedience 
and toil. As the result of this state of things, 
woman, though to all appearances in subjection, 
becomes powerfully developed both physically and 
morally, and, as is commonly the case in the East, 
possesses incomparably more influence and conse- 
quence in domestic affairs than in the West. Her 
seclusion from society and her inurement to hard 
manual labour give her still more authority and com- 
mand in domestic affairs. The Cossack who, in the 
presence of strangers, regards it as unbecoming to 
talk affectionately or gossip with his wife, cannot 
help feeling her superiority when he is left alone 
with her. His whole house, his whole estate, his 
whole establishment have been acquired by her, and 
are maintained solely by her labours and exertions. 
And though he is obstinately convinced that toil is 
degrading for a Cossack, and is the proper occupa- 
tion only of a Nogai labourer or a woman, yet he has 
a dim consciousness that everything that redounds 
to his comfort, and that he calls his own, is the re- 
sult of this toil, and that it is in the power of his 
mother or his wife, even though he looks on her as 
his serf, to deprive him of all that makes his life 
agreeable. 



230 THE COSSACKS 

Moreover, the constant hard field labour, and the 
duties intrusted to them, give a peculiarly inde- 
pendent, masculine character to the "greben" 
women, and have served to develop in them, to a 
remarkable degree, physical powers, healthy minds, 
decision and stability of character. The women are 
for the most part stronger and more intelligent, 
better developed and handsomer, than the men. The 
beauty of the women among the "Grebensky" (or 
Terek) Cossacks is due to the striking union in 
them of the purest type of the Tcherkess with the 
full and powerful build of the northern woman. 
Their usual dress is Tcherkess : the Tartar shirt, the 
beshmet, or under-tunic, and the foot-gear called 
ckuvyaki; but they wear the kerchiefs in the Rus- 
sian way. The wearing of clean, rich and elegant 
attire, and the decoration of their cottages, belong 
to the inseparable conditions of their existence." 



While the monotonous garrison routine of the 
stanitzi of the Terek still offers the occasional con- 
genial adventure of a foray against their wild 
mountaineer neighbours, the Astrakhan Cossacks 
who have their headquarters in the picturesque, but 
unhealthy metropolis of the lower Volga, are prin- 
cipally engaged in the lucrative but unwarlike trade 
of fishing. The Astrakhan Cossacks form a fast 
disappearing branch of the Cossack race. Origi- 
nally an offshoot of the DonsJcoi they are now 
slowly being absorbed by the neighbouring non- 
Cossack population. 

The whole northern end of the shallow sandy- 



THE FRONTIERS OF EUROPE 231 

bottomed Caspian is a vast natural fish-pond. In 
spite of a yearly catch of countless sturgeon, her- 
ring, beluga, soudak and other varieties of fish, 
many of them wholly unknown outside the waters 
of this finny paradise, the supply seems inex- 
haustible. 

From the Volga fisheries (and those of the Ural) 
is obtained the world's principal supply of the fa- 
mous Russian delicacy — caviar; unknown, how- 
ever, under that name, and always locally called 
ikra. As the Cossack communities of the Volga 
and Ural have preserved to a great extent ancient 
exclusive rights to the river fisheries, they are by 
far the richest of the Cossack armies. These fish- 
eries, which have existed for centuries, are now ex- 
ploited by the most scientific methods. The never- 
failing demand for caviar, of both the coarse and 
finer qualities, always far exceeds the supply. In 
Russia as well as in Europe, it is a highly expensive 
delicacy. In the early days of these colonies, salted 
caviar, packed in little wooden kegs, formed the 
most acceptable tribute which could be offered to 
the Russian court, and this delectable product pur- 
chased indemnity for many a Cossack misdeed. On 
account of its portable nature the price of caviar is 
almost as high in the restaurants of Astrakhan as 
in the great restaurants of Europe. A true gour- 
met will, however, be rewarded threefold should he 
make the pious pilgrimage to Astrakhan for the 
purpose of tasting the silver-grey, nearly unsalted 



232 THE COSSACKS 

ikra, only to be^ obtained at its best near the place 

of origin. 

****** 

Just across the administrative boundaries of 
European Russia lies the little Cossack capital of 
Uralsk, still in many ways the most characteristic 
of the Cossack communities. The adventurous his- 
tory of this frontier stronghold is especially associ- 
ated with the name of Pougatchev and the great 
Cossack revolt of the reign of Catherine II. Fol- 
lowing the defeat of the armies of the "False Peter 
III," only accomplished after a long and bitter 
struggle, the ancient name of Jaik, which had for- 
merly distinguished both the Cossacks and their 
country, was changed to its present name of 
Uralsk.* 

On account of their isolation from their neigh- 
bours, the Uralski Kasaki have preserved many of 
the manners and customs of the ancient Cossacks, 
long since abandoned by the Cossacks of the Don. 
In these rarely visited districts the ancient system 
of Cossack land tenure and communal existence 
are still maintained in all their purity. (See Ap- 
pendix.) 

The Cossacks of the Uralsk deserve, perhaps 
more than any other branch of their race, to be 
called the true survivors of the old "Free People." 

* Since the author's visit to Uralsk, in 1916, the old 
name of Jaik has been restored by a vote of the Cossack 
community. 



THE FRONTIERS OF EUROPE 233 

For more than three hundred years they have 
figured in Russian history. To the remnants of 
ancient tribes, perhaps of Scythian origin, fugitive 
Russian peasants and other foreigners joined them- 
selves to form the earliest community inhabiting 
the shores of the Jaik. Among these first settlers 
were many religious refugees, a majority of them 
belonging to the strange Russian sect known as 
Raskolniki or "Old Believers." These Russian 
sectarians, rather than obey the reforming edicts of 
the Tsars who desired to modernize the ritual of 
the ancient faith, fled to the deserts to worship God 
after the primitive fashion of their fathers. A cen- 
sus made during the reign of Peter the Great 
(1723) shows that the colony included the members 
of several sects of dissenters, many of whom held to 
creeds stranger than those of the Raskolniki, Along 
the shores of the Jaik all who were persecuted and 
oppressed, whether Poles, Hungarians or Cossacks 
of the Don, could live their lives as they pleased. 

It was not until the end of the eighteenth century 
that the Russian Government sought to exercise 
any control other than a nominal supervision over 
these liberty-loving citizens. It is to be feared, 
however, that the Cossack Puritans of Uralsk had 
their own strange ideas of the ethics of freedom: 
for, as one of their rollicking songs expresses it, 

"Formerly we Cossack fellows 
Sailed at home upon the sea ; 
Our long boats upon the waters 
Took a toll from Khiv and Persia."* 
* See an article by N. Borodin. Popular Science 
Monthly. 



234 THE COSSACKS 

As long as these austere brigands confined their 
attention to the subjects of the Shah and the Khan 
of Khiva the Russian Government interfered but 
little with their affairs. It was only when, at the 
end of the eighteenth century, Russian trade upon 
the Caspian began to be an important factor that 
the business of piracy fell upon evil days. However, 
the great extension which contact with Russian 
merchants gave to the fishing industry more than 
made up for the toll which the Cossacks formerly 
levied on the trade passing near their shores. 

An interesting historical note, concerning these 
"fishing" Cossacks, may be found in Hak- 
luyt's "Voyages." In this account we are told 
that in 1673, Master Geoffrey Ducket, returning 
from his fifth voyage for the Muscovy Company, 
ran afoul of these pirates, when, "by reason of the 
variety of the winds and dangerous flats of the 
Caspian Sea" he was riding at anchor near their 
shores. He tells that "certain Rus Cossacks, which 
are outlaws or banished men . . . came to us with 
divers boats under cover of friendship and entered 
our ship." The suspicious conduct of these visi- 
tors, however, soon undeceived the wise British 
merchants with respect to their intentions and they 
thereupon took their hatchets and "skowred the 
hatches." 

For many years the Uralski Cossacks have lived 
as orderly and peaceable an existence as frontier 
conditions permit. They were among the first to 



THE FRONTIERS OF EUROPE 235 

declare their allegiance to the constitutional gov- 
ernment after the overthrow of Tsarism in 1917, 
and have since resisted the tyranny exercised from 
Moscow and Petrograd by "King Stork" Lenin, 
with the same courage and determination which 
they opposed to the officials of "King Log" 
Nicholas. The leaders of the Soviet movement — 
realizing the necessity of winning the Cossack ele- 
ment to their doctrines — have tried every method 
learned from their German teachers, from ter- 
rorism to propaganda, to enlist the sympathies of 
the sturdy Uralski, But the excesses of the pande- 
moniac government at Petrograd have so disgusted 
the Cossacks that the adherents of the Bolsheviki 
were none too gently thrown out of their settle- 
ments, early in the struggle between order and 
anarchy.* 

******** 

Some 210 miles northwest of Uralsk lies the Cos- 
sack capital of Orenburg, a frontier post which has 
played a famous part in the stirring annals of Rus- 
sia's conquest of the khanates of Central Asia. 
Several times the entire city has been transferred to 
another site, but always nearer to the goal of Rus- 

* According to a dispatch to the New York Evening 
Post of May 26, 1919, the advance of a relieving force 
of General Kolchak's Siberian troops found the garrison 
of Uralsk maintaining the gallant resistance to the "Red 
Army" which they have carried on since the beginning of 
the war. 



236 THE COSSACKS 

sia's ambition — the rich oases of Khiva, Merv, Bo- 
khara, and Samarkand, the centre of Mussulman 
culture and power in the days of the World Empire 
of Tamerlane. 

Between Orenburg and Tashkent a commercially 
strategic line of railway, which may be said to rank 
but second in importance to the Trans-Siberian, 
now unites European Russia with these prosperous 
Asiatic markets. The wonderful fruits grown in 
the orchards of Samarkand and Bokhara were be- 
fore the present disturbances transported via Oren- 
burg in long trains of refrigerating cars and 
distributed all over the Moscow area. On the far 
Chinese frontier a great cotton-raising district had 
also sprung into existence during the last two 
decades of imperial government, when the abroga- 
tion of the Russo- American commercial treaty 
caused the government to aim at becoming economi- 
cally independent in this respect. 

The present city of Orenburg, standing on a high 
bluff, overlooking a boundless sweep of Tartar 
steppes, is fast losing its Cossack character through 
the influx of an alien commercial population. 

In the neat public gardens of Orenburg, where 
before the advent of the Bolsheviki a Cossack band 
discoursed almost nightly to the promenaders, the 
population of Orenburg could be studied in all the 
strange variety of its racial elements. Apparently 
on the best of terms, the Russianized Tartar inhabi- 
tants and the military and civil officials of the gov- 



THE FRONTIERS OF EUROPE 237 

ernment here met on common ground. Hither 
came the comely Tartar maiden (who of her 
national costume only retained the not unbecoming 
Tartar headdress) to flirt discreetly with the stu- 
dents of the Cossack military school. On the 
benches sat Sart and Tartar merchants talking over 
the day's business with Russian or Armenian shop- 
keepers. 

Ranking after the territory of the Don and 
Uralsk Cossacks in extent, the land of the Oren- 
burg Cossacks, stretching in a long narrow band 
along the course of the upper Uralsk River, is far 
more Cossack in character than the capital city. Yet 
under the colonial policy of the old imperial gov- 
ernment, the fertile land was becoming filled with 
new-comers of the non-Cossack class — moujjik 
colonists from the overcrowded villages of the 
north, besides Tartar peasants from the south. 
Even the half -nomad tribesmen, Kirghiz and Kal- 
moucks, who have wandered over these plains since 
the days of the Golden Horde, are now beginning 
to settle in village communities. Often these little 
agglomerations are composed partly of mud huts 
or hovels, partly of the old felt tents of the more 
conservative tribesmen. 

Everywhere the virgin soil is capable, even under 
the most primitive agricultural conditions, of phe- 
nomenal returns for labour expended upon it. The 
statistics of Orenburg show that the population of 
this province and its dependencies were, before the 



238 THE COSSACKS 

war, among the most rapidly growing communities 
of Russia. 

The Russian has always been successful as an 
Asiatic colonist — for reasons worthy of considera- 
tion by our new "mandatory' ' powers. In this 
"melting-pot" one may study the process, so much 
freer of "race-pride" than the Anglo-Saxon 
methods of colonization, which enabled the Tsarist 
government to fling wide the frontiers of their Em- 
pire during the last half of the nineteenth century. 

In this task of Europeanization the Cossack has 
played an important role. Fitted by his origin and 
history to be an intermediary between East and 
West, he is happily endowed with sympathy and 
understanding for two often irreconcilable view- 
points. Above all, he has none of the fine contempt 
for the "yellow races" which besets the Anglo- 
Saxon, not to mention the now happily disarmed 
apostles of Kultur. Aside from the pathetic and 
ridiculous attempts of the Bolsheviki to introduce 
their stereotyped Marxian kultur into the world- 
old Cosmos of Asia — Russia has played a note- 
worthy role in her Asiatic dominions. While show- 
ing powers of as. imilation, only to be explained by 
Russian racial history, the rule of Tsarism was 
generally less resented among her subject nations 
than England's milder sway in India. Autocracy 
and its methods came from Asia and is in no sense 
generally disliked by the vast majority of Asiatics 
to-day. 



THE FRONTIERS OF EUROPE 239 

In its future dealings with these subject people 
of the old empire a liberalized Russia will find a 
difficult problem, yet to aid her in this task she will 
have the organized experience of her Cossack fron- 
tiersmen. No one who has had first-hand knowl- 
edge of these borderlands can believe for a moment 
that the Cossack's mission will end until the vast 
plains of Central Asia have advanced much farther 
than they have to-day along the paths of Europe's 
compelling — if not so immeasurably superior — 
civilization. 

THE END 



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